


trying to sever the tether

by anatomied



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M, possibly the most niche thing yet, ray leaving in a darker universe gets complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:39:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12626301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatomied/pseuds/anatomied
Summary: The Fake AH Crew is the churning and grinding guts of a bloody machine. Ray understands what it means to remove a part.





	1. things i'd never say directly

**Author's Note:**

> my audience: surely the dishonored au is as niche as she'll get, there's nothing more niche than this -  
> me, whipping the cover off of this bad boy: my strength in niche writing only grows day by day

The knife glints in the dying light. It’s a new one, or at least from the depths of Ryan’s massive collection of knives, all unique. This one’s thin and wickedly sharpened down to a perfect point by Ryan’s hand. It could probably cut the air if he swung it in the right way. Ray lingers a few feet behind the rest of the crew, hands in his pocket. It’s not his job to get involved. In fact, it’s his job to remain uninvolved and perch on rooftops.

This is what happens when someone threatens the crew.

The leader of the group, some up and coming misfits calling themselves the Jackals, is flat on his back on the floor. Gavin’s information, if true, has pinned them down as some rogue offshoot of the Marabunta guys. That probably means they weren’t long for this world anyway, but they shot at Gavin before they started getting into it with the Marabunta Grande.

So. This is the inevitable conclusion.

Ryan’s leaning over the leader. Ray was probably told the guy’s name in the car, but whatever, who cares? It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.

Geoff, esteemed leader that he is, is playing some game on his phone. Ray peers over his shoulder. “Are you fucking playing _Crazy Taxi_?” he demands. Geoff and his mustache turn back to give him an annoyed look. On screen, the taxi collides with three different cars and a dumpster, and the two passengers in the back let out disappointed yelps. Ray moves up a little closer and knocks his shoulder against Geoff’s gently, a bit of an apology for ruining the flow. “Hey. You’re okay —,” he begins.

“Get in,” Geoff finishes, rolling his eyes and tapping away. Ray is vaguely delighted by the prospect that Geoff Ramsey, king of Los Santos crime, likes Crazy Taxi. Somehow it works better than he initially thought. Half of their heists end in driving that seems to come straight out of the game - barely dodging cars and getting good air time off of hills.

Ryan’s still talking to the gang leader on the floor, his voice running through that particular gentle cadence he uses when he’s terrifying. Even from this angle, Ray can clearly make out the tears running down the man’s face, the way he spits out terrified syllables in garbled Spanish. It’s garbled because Ryan already took out a few of his teeth earlier. Michael brought along a pair of pliers for this very purpose.

The teeth themselves sit in a wet and bloody puddle to the left of Ryan’s boots. Ryan took his time leaving them there, the deliberate click of each piece of enamel against concrete following methodically after the man stopped screaming.

“Hey,” Ryan says softly, fingers brushing along the man’s cheek, “you tell me who gave you the info, and I won’t feed you pieces of your own tongue, okay? Easy.” He always does this. His gloved hands become so fucking soft. Sometimes, when it’s just him and Ryan on the couch and Ryan touches him like that, Ray wants to lean into it and dive out the window in the same moment. Fight or flight. Afraid that habit might make Ryan’s hands move in a different way entirely, to tear his shoulder from his socket.

The man spits - literally, blood and spit hitting Ryan in the face - out a few clear words. “Fuck you, _pendejo_ , _tú y tus amigos malditas_. _Estoy muerto de todos modos_ — ”

Everyone looks over at Ray expectantly.

Ray shrugs at them helplessly. “Dude, just ‘cause I’m Puerto Rican doesn’t mean I know what the fuck he’s saying. I didn’t even take Spanish in high school. Someone better have a translator ready.”

“What the fuck do we even have you here for then?” Ryan demands. There’s a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He and Ray always do this to each other during the worst possible moments. Geoff or Jack will berate them for it later. But for now, it’s easy. Ray shrugs at him, taking it well.

“It’s ‘cause I look cute. And because _someone_ can’t shoot for shit with a sniper rifle.”

“Fuck you,” Ryan snaps, and the guy on the ground makes a grab for the knife, probably hoping Ryan’s grip is loose enough where he can wrestle it away. Unfortunately, that’s a bad move. Everyone’s hands leap to their guns at once, but Ryan’s grip is nothing if not strong, and Ray winces a little inwardly as Ryan yanks the guy away by the collar and jams the knife all the way through his hand. “You are cute, though. Cuter with your rifle.”

“Yeah,” says Ray a little weakly.

Everyone else in the crew glances over at him as if concerned. Ray’s tone doesn’t _waver_. It’s not who he is. But there’s something about the juxtaposition of the knife in the guy’s hand, and the screaming, and the thrashing, and Ryan’s mouth moving carefully around the syllables of a compliment —

He doesn’t know. It just makes everything seem to grind to an uncomfortable halt to a moment. But like a record player getting stuck, the moment forces itself onwards.

“Just tell me a name,” Ryan says to the man on the ground, yanking the knife back out. Michael’s watching with something like clinical interest. Gavin’s just sitting cross-legged on the ground with one of the group’s laptops, the leader’s phone hooked up to it, trying to break into both at once and gain whatever information they can from two sources of information. The British man’s chewing on his nails a little, focus intense on the screen.

“A name,” Ryan repeats. He’s pressing on some kind of pressure point with the knife, some random place in the guy’s side that’s making him writhe and inadvertently press the knife deeper.

Gavin lets out a little _ah_ , eyes flying up from the screen. “Geoff. I’ve got it. Texts with all of his contacts, past phone calls, any records on the laptop.”

“Good.” Geoff’s not taking his eyes off his phone. Ray, from his limited view, sees the flash of something dangerous cross Geoff’s features, and he knows exactly how this is going to end. It’s been ending like this more and more often recently. “Ryan, go ahead.”

“Man,” the gang leader whimpers, “why the fuck are you working for Ramsey? Half a dozen other crews would give the fuckin’ Vagabond a bigger cut, I’m tellin’ you.”

Something about that seems to visibly irk Geoff. His thumb precisely taps the pause button on the corner of the screen, pausing it in the middle of the Offspring wailing away at some typical nihilist punk in the game’s background. “Maybe it’s ‘cause I let Ryan here do what he likes to do best, and I don’t ask him stupid fucking questions along the way.”

The gang leader doesn’t get to respond to that. Ryan cuts a crimson line from one side of his neck to the other. Then again, it isn’t so much a line as it is a vicious tear, nearly all the way from one side of the man’s throat clear to the other. Ryan rocks back on his heels. Ray’s staring at him, at the spectacle. Normally he’d be looking at his phone by now, but there’s something about this ticking away at the back of his brain.

From Geoff’s phone, a customer in _Crazy Taxi_ shouts _I want to go here!_

At once both here and elsewhere, Ray mouths along with the driver’s typical response. _Okay, but don’t freak out on me!_

——

Him and Ryan aren’t dating, precisely.

What they are is weird even to Ray, and he’s fifty percent of the relationship here. Sometimes Ryan shows up to his place, and they fuck, and it’s good. Sometimes Ryan stays afterwards and they talk and play games, and that’s good too. Over time, as the crew seems to have shifted - and Ray feels like he’s the only one who’s noticed that, sometimes - Ryan shifted with it. Before _‘haha, Ryan has murdered a lot of people_ ’ was kind of a crew joke. After all, Ryan had always been the most prone to just kill someone without hearing them out. By this point, it was starting to just become a statement of fact. Ryan has, in fact, murdered a lot of people.

So has Ray, in the end.

Fake AH was a group in search of heists. But now, there’s something else happening.

 _Civilians_ , Ray said last week.

Michael shrugged. _Yeah, but, c’mon_.

Come the fuck on, Ray, just get on board. Just drink the Kool-Aid. Why aren’t you agreeing, you fucking idiot?

He’s beginning to think this whole thing is a bad idea. This is a thought that has never occurred to him before. It turns worse and bitter when he’s alone in his apartment. Three hours ago, Ryan cut a gang member’s throat where before they might’ve just forced him into being a source of information and let him go home. Ray still doesn’t have a problem with killing, precisely. He shoots people on every single heist. Sometimes a civilian gets hit because they’re walking in the wrong place. That’s fine. That’s just how the job works.

It’s the disregard, though.

It haunts him.

Ray paces around his apartment. The thought won’t let him sleep. It refuses.to let him relax. It eats away at him as he swallows down cereal and clicks the television on and off and _lives_ , somehow.

Guilt and him have never been close. But as a consequence, he has no idea how to deal with it, with holding this thing on his back and just walking around with it. It feels ready to crush him at a moment’s weakness.

There are two options. Get in, and go back to letting Ryan pin him against his front door and get him off with his fucking infuriating hands or mouth, or get out. The second one just terrifies him. No one’s ever _left_ before. Ray tries to think of how Geoff would react. Jack would probably keep him from sending Ryan to kill him, which is a positive, but any hope stops right there. On the other hand - maybe the crew needs a little bit of a shock to pull itself together. Shock therapy doesn’t work - but maybe it’s less a shock as it is separating a diseased body from him.

In the end, Geoff might still send Ryan after him, which is a terror in and of itself. Because Geoff might say _don’t kill him_ , but Ryan’s brain is a dark and unknowable place. Ray doesn’t know how Ryan will actually take that. Maybe there's some _Boxing Helena_ shit ticking quietly away in Ryan’s brain, waiting for the moment to morph into conscious thought.

As if on cue, his phone buzzes furiously on the counter. He picks it up and squints down at the screen. Of course it’s Ryan. Couldn’t be anyone harmless like Gavin. He answers anyway, ignoring how damp his palms are. “Hey, Ry.”

“Hey.” A wash of noise rises and falls in the background. He must be driving. “Just wanted to check in. You seemed a little off earlier today.” Ryan is good at concern. It fills out his tone and warms it up, softening it into something that melts slowly. It lulls someone into almost forgetting how easily the man behind the voice slit a man’s throat, like that, blood spraying outwards.

Ray shuts his eyes. “Yeah. Just, uh - a bad morning, that’s all. Not sleeping great.”

The pause sits between them. “Need a distraction?” Ryan offers mildly. That could either mean a series of small petty crimes or some unprecedented levels of sin, depending on Ryan’s mood.

“I’m good,” Ray squawks out. It’s not like him, but part of him worries that if he sees Ryan in person, he’ll give in just like that. A fucking compulsion in a person.

The pause is even longer this time. Ray resists the urge to hang up. “... Okay.” Ryan’s voice is perfectly even.

“Okay?” Ray can’t help but repeat him.

“Yeah.” Ryan’s smile is audible. “See you around, Ray.”

The call ends.

Ray stares down at his phone. Maybe he’s already made his choice here, in this miniscule act of pushing Ryan away. Maybe all of the back-and-forth was a fucking prelude, a distraction. Maybe he’s known since the second that Ryan grabbed him six months ago, bloody and hungry, to kiss him up against a wall like he never wanted to let him go, that this was going to end a certain way. Ray’s never been the type to kill himself. But he’s killed past selves - who he grew up as, the years working at GameStop and pretending he was happy, the person he thought he was going to be. He can kill who he is now and replace it with someone else with terrifying ease.

One time, he and Ryan were in the back of a diner, lazily leaning against each other. _I like you_ , Ryan had said casually, his hand tracing up Ray’s thigh, _because you’re so God damned good at being exactly who you are, every time. Shitty jokes and weed included. Me, I’m mostly good at being a lot of different people all at once._

Ray knows who he is. He also knows how to distill that down and move it into another life, slotting details into place with precision.

 _I’m sorry, Ryan,_ Ray thinks.

He begins to make a list.

——

People think it’s hard to disappear.

But if you have a lot of time to think about it - on stakeouts, for example - it’s not that hard to do. Ray needs a few things off the top of his head. He needs a method of death big enough and destructive enough to make evidence difficult to find. He needs a body double - his height and weight. He needs a similar model of sniper rifle, since he has hot pink spray paint. He needs a scapegoat to focus the crew’s ire on a person or group instead of digging up evidence. He needs a new hoodie. He needs an escape vehicle and to decide on a time.

It takes him three weeks and another heist to come up with a method of death.

Michael whoops on the radio, Ray already relaxed on the roof of one of their Rockford Hills safehouses, slowly drinking a Red Bull. He glances up in time to see half a block explode upwards in a mess of concrete and shrapnel maybe ten miles away. “Nothing fucking left!” Michael yells, static blasting through his voice and marring the syllables.

Nothing left.

Ray yanks his earpiece out, letting it hang loose and limp along his shoulder.

 _Okay_ , he thinks, watching the debris slowly settle and burn in the distance. _Explosives_.

——

The rest of it falls into place faster. He orders a new black hoodie for twenty bucks. He picks up another rifle and heads out to an empty lot in the harbor to paint it, his hands reeking of paint fumes for days. He picks up a new motorcycle, plain black and worn.

There’s a knock on the door as he goes about folding the new hoodie carefully. Ray shoves the thing underneath some blankets on the couch and gets up to go answer the door. He picks up the gun as he goes, just in case. Maybe Geoff’s been watching his Amazon purchases somehow and has some questions or something. But what he sees through the peephole makes him want to turn away and go back to sleep for about the next twenty years.

It’s Ryan.

“Yeah?” Ray says through the door, his finger twitching on the gun.

“Ray - can we talk? I can tell you’re avoiding me or whatever, and I’d like to talk about it like adults.” The statement is more than a little condescending, but Ray can hear the strain in Ryan’s voice. He is very specifically trying to not be mad as hell. Ray swallows and sets the gun softly down on the table beside the door. Then he unlocks the door and swings it open.

Ryan looks at him for a moment. His eyes are terrifyingly bright behind the mask, the paint throwing the shadows of the skull’s eye sockets perfectly across his face. Ray steps back and gestures vaguely. “Lock the door behind you,” he says, letting himself be perfectly casual. “Don’t be an asshole about it.” Ryan lets out a small scoff and Ray listens to the sound of the lock clicking shut behind them. They are now alone in his apartment. Ray runs the location of all the weapons in the apartment through in his mind, just in case. He knows where everything is in this room. Ryan doesn’t.

Home advantage, motherfucker. His fingers itch for a knife, anything with weight.

He perches on his usual corner of the couch, leaning up against the blankets. Ryan comes in and sits down on the other end. The two of them sit there in silence, some infomercial playing on the television. Ray stares out the window for a moment, trying to figure out what to say.

“Alright,” Ryan says slowly. “Did I do something to piss you off? I’ve never known you to be the distant type, or the easily offended type, so it must’ve been something.”

“No,” Ray admits. “It’s just - I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

“Well, Jesus, Ray.” Ryan glances over at him, a smirk turning up the corners of his mouth. “Don’t try so hard that you give yourself a fucking hemorrhage.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Ray hates this. He hates how _easily_ he responds to Ryan, how their banter comes so naturally. The only other person that he fits with so easily is Michael, and part of that stems from their shared history. “I’m serious, Ry. My brain’s just in a weird place, and i wanted some time alone to try and figure it out.”

“Is time alone helping?” Ryan sounds doubtful.

Ray shrugs and toys with the strings of his hoodie. “I don’t know.”

It’s the most honest thing he’s said so far. He doesn’t know if his plans are helping, or if they’re going to cause irreparable damage. He almost stiffens in surprise when Ryan’s hand suddenly moves over and intertwines its fingers with his. Ray lets it happen, trying to force the tension out of his shoulders. Ryan’s frowning the whole time as he draws Ray closer, reeling him in like some caught fish twisting away on a line.

Ray’s body betrays him all over again, collapsing against Ryan’s.

That warmth and contact is all it takes for some of that tension to leak away. Ray closes his eyes for a moment as Ryan cards his fingers through Ray’s hair. “I wish you’d talk to me more,” Ryan says softly. “I know talking for you is about as easy as pulling teeth —”

“Yeah, you’d fucking know.” Ray barely manages to pull his tone down from something outright accusatory into mere sharpness.

He doesn’t need to look up to tell Ryan’s rolling his eyes. “There’s the Ray I know.” Were this a romcom, the next words out of Ryan’s mouth would’ve been _and love_. But there’s nothing. The sentence drops in the same way an object drops off a cliff. It plummets at top speed. Part of him is half-expecting this to progress in sex, with the warm familiarity of Ryan’s body against his. It would be easier that way.

It doesn’t. They stay that way quietly for an hour, Ryan pressing his fingers along Ray’s spine slowly, as if testing each vertebrae for weakness.

He could throw it all out - the new hoodie, the new rifle, the list of new gangs popping up in the dingiest areas in the city. Let his guilt eventually fall back asleep, harmless all over again. The idea’s so fucking tempting. This is why Ray didn’t want to let Ryan in. It would be dangerous. It would let him regress. But it’s a balancing act. Don’t seem suspicious. Don’t turn weak and betray yourself.

“I worry about you, Ray,” Ryan murmurs, rough and soft.

 _I worry about you_. Could mean anything. Could mean genuine worry. Could mean Ryan can see the handwriting on the wall as well as Ray can, the way that this monumental shift is slowly moving down the line.

A new item on the list begins to formulate itself in Ray’s mind, the final thing he’ll have to do.

——

The next week, he goes out to lunch with Michael and Gavin. More accurately, Michael shows up to his apartment and bangs on the door for ten minutes until Ray throws it open and points a gun at him. Then Ray gets wrestled into going to a local pizza place. Ray plays along. He chuckles at all the right jokes and pokes fun at Gavin at all the right moments. It is an excellent performance, even if his mind is focused elsewhere. He’s got most of the pieces in place. He’s picked a gang that’s moving into the area around his apartment - the Moreno family, new and furious. Violent streak, out to prove themselves, and just maybe smart enough to pinpoint Ray’s location.

They’re not actually that smart, of course, but they can be - if Ray portrays them that way.

He eats a few slices of pizza and kicks Gavin enough times under the table to make it seem like everything’s good. It’s not lunch with the guys, after all, unless Gavin limps away with a bruised shin. He embarrasses himself in front of the waitress, which makes Michael laugh so hard that he nearly chokes to death on a mushroom. It’s good. Ray lets himself enjoy this as much as he can, because if his timeline’s right, this may be the last lunch they have as a group.

“Connor’s got some new explosives,” Michael mentions, fiddling with the tablecloth. “They’re cheap shit, but apparently they’re pretty good. Too unreliable, though. Don’t want one of ‘em going off and blowing this dipshit sky high, ‘cause God knows he’s the only one who wouldn’t listen to where the explosives are.”

He socks Gavin hard in the shoulder. Gavin squawks Michael’s name indignantly, grabbing the attention of half the patrons in the restaurant, and insists that yes, he would absolutely listen.

“Hey, Gav,” Ray drawls out, tracing some of the squares on the checkered tablecloth. “You remember that time, oh, two heists ago, where the only reason you _didn’t_ get blown up was ‘cause Ryan fucking yanked you into his car at the last second? You were just standing around like a dumbass - _oh, where’s the car_?” He tips his voice up and puts on the worst Cockney accent possible for the last bit.

Michael hoots out a classic _Ray coming in with the vinegar_ as Gavin issues denial after denial.

When Gavin slips out of the booth to go take a piss, Ray pulls out his phone and finds Connor’s contact. He’s a guy from back in Michael and Ray’s days together, reliable and willing to not ask questions. _Got any of those new explosives? Thinkin of buying some for Michael_. He slips his phone back into his pocket before Michael can ask questions.

Connor doesn’t reply until he’s back home in his apartment, watching _John Wick_ and eyeing the new sniper rifle leaning up against the wall. The paint’s long since dried, and he’s banged it into a few walls by accident. It’s just ended up looking authentically damaged.

_Sure thing, man. What time do you want to pick it up?_

He schedules the pickup for Tuesday at two in the afternoon.

For a while after that he wanders around his apartment, staring at the walls, thinking about where to place explosives. Ray turns a slow circle around his kitchen in just his socks and pajama pants, thinking to himself about structural weakness. He doesn’t want to kill anyone else, but there’s no such thing as an explosion without collateral. So he’ll have to pull the fire alarm to get everyone out or otherwise try to set them in a way that maybe only takes down one floor instead of the whole building.

A plan begins to formulate alongside the list slowly. It seems so much easier when he gets to whittle it down to a series of steps, careful and slow. If he does this just right, if everything works out in his favor, he might be able to get away. He just has to pick a date and a time. He has to get Ryan there, outside, to see the explosion, to convince him of the reality of the moment. He’ll be the hardest to convince, after all. Michael and Geoff will just be furious and out for revenge. Ryan’s situation is more complicated than that.

It’s cruel of him, but this whole thing has cruelty as its backbone.

Connor is perfectly cheerful when Ray shows up to pick up the explosives. He claps Ray on the shoulder, casual as can be. “Tell Michael to fuckin’ call once in a while.”

“Oh, I will.”

He won’t.

——

Ray tries his best not to think about the kind of person he’s going to become afterwards. Instead, he focuses on the present, on shoring up his convictions. He looks at the way things have changed - about the way Ryan cuts a civilian who gets in his way in half with a shotgun blast like it’s nothing, or the way Michael doesn’t give people a chance to get away from a detonation like they used to. People are becoming more and more expendable to them. Ray’s still not sure where it came from, where he falls into it.

Sometimes he thinks this amount of caring, of guilt, is more of an obligation than something that fits in his mind naturally. He knows what the right thing is on a technical level, but he’s still not sure if it goes beyond that.

And sometimes he thinks - as esoteric as it sounds, like he’s been reading too much of the Shakespeare that Ryan loves so damn much - that it’s the city itself. Los Santos breeds certain things into people. It makes them harsher. It makes them more likely to pull a knife or a gun, to hit first and harder.

It strips empathy out of you, slow and careful, and makes you perfect to keep making the city a worse place. Ray’s all for making bad places worse. He believes most things deteriorate in an inevitable way.

But this, them, the crew - it's all something different. It's one thing to be a monster in a city built on monstrosity. It's another thing to rise to the top and say  _here, yeah, that's where we belong_.

Because you have to sell something to get there. 

——

He told himself he’d go through one more heist.

By the end of the night, Ray staggers through familiar Los Santos streets, his knees and hands scraped up, a bullet having whistled right past him and cut a thin bleeding line along his shoulder. He and Ryan are supposed to meet here. He leans against the wall and clutches a hand to his arm, pulling it back with fingers covered with blood. “Fuck,” he snarls, letting his head thump back against the wall. Just give himself a concussion and pass out. It would be easier than getting through the rest of the night.

His nose is dripping with blood. Must’ve started a nosebleed after all when he tripped around a corner and smashed half of his face against the bricks.

“Shit,” he snarls again.

A form slips out of an alley nearby. Ray raises his gun before he can think. Then he sees the familiar colors of the jacket, blue and black and white, and nearly lowers the gun.

A tiny brutal part of him whispers _pull the trigger_. It would be easy. It would look like an accident, a stray bullet from a gun Ray grabbed off a cop on the way here. The right caliber for an officer of Los Santos PD, not for the crew's resident sniper. This entire plan would work out so much better without Ryan in the works, making things more difficult as he always does. It would take entire chunks of planning away.

 _No better than them_ , Ray thinks. That’s what it is now. Him versus them, versus the crew. He is outside of them now, internally if not externally.

But he lowers the gun and leans back again with an exhale. “Jesus, Ry. You scared the shit out of me. Give me a little warning next time.”

“You’re hurt,” Ryan says. Captain fucking Obvious over here. Ray tries to wave it off as Ryan moves forward and gently takes his jaw in his hand, tilting his head a little more towards the light. At this angle, Ray can feel blood dripping down the back of his throat slow and thick, the taste nearly bitter. “Broken nose?”

“Probably.” Ray is only aware of how nasally his voice sounds right now in comparison to Ryan’s. “You good?”

“Bullet through my left arm.” Ray looks down as best he can. Ryan’s hugging his arm close to his side, unnaturally stiff. “Clean through, though. I think. So it’s not that bad. And that’s it.”

“Not bad.” Ryan lets go and Ray’s hand snaps up to wipe some of the blood away from under his nose. “Let’s get into the safehouse, then.”

He has to open the door, as he sees the way Ryan’s got one hand clutched around the bullet wound. They’ll have to patch that up as soon as Ray’s nose stops bleeding. The safehouse today is tiny and dingy, one cheap light in the center of the room flickering on as Ray finds the light switch. Ryan locks the door and Ray digs around under the tiny bathroom sink until he finds a shitty old medical kit. Probably been around since the fucking Black Death or something from the looks of it, but it’s better than nothing.

He sets it on the edge of the sink and catches his reflection in the mirror. The look on his face stops him. One side of his face is scraped up all to hell. There’s blood wet and red below his nose and caked on his lips. He can see that the collision with the wall’s given him some bruising that’ll be a full-fledged black eye by tomorrow. Ray’s lucky that he’s learned by now to tug off his glasses during pursuits like this.

He stares at himself, at the swollen grotesque look of his eye socket.

It startles him all over again when Ryan slips into the bathroom behind him. The space is already small, but it’s even smaller with both of them crammed inside. Ray spins around, almost knocking the medical kit off the sink. He and Ryan’s hands both lift up to stop it, Ray using the motion to brace himself up against the sink.

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Guess I scared you again.”

“Yeah,” Ray breathes.

“Sorry.” Ryan’s hand snakes under Ray’s in order to slide the medical kit off of the sink. “Just want to get this over with.”

Patching each other up is slow work. Ray appreciates the steadiness of it though, as much as he usually hates it. This, of course, is not an average heist. Usually the way he patches up Ryan is pretty haphazard - good enough, wait it out for Jack to do it over again right. Today he takes his time. He actually elevates Ryan’s arm worth a damn and keeps the bandage there, waiting for the bleeding to stop. It doesn’t take as long as he thought it might.

Ryan simply leans back on the shitty couch that he’s basically taken up half of, letting his eyes slide shut. Only the slow steady sound of his breathing betrays that he’s awake at all.

“How’re you feeling?” Ray asks quietly. It feels off to raise his voice above a low rasp.

Ryan shrugs, wincing a little at the motion. “Fine.”

“Fucking liar,” Ray chides softly.

“I’m not lying.” Ryan’s fingers dance along the bottom of Ray’s hoodie, fingertips sliding along fabric. “I’m fine. Just distracted.”

“By what?” Ray knows what. He knows by the look on Ryan’s face, the purposeful way that his fingers skate lower and hook into the waistband of Ray’s jeans. Instead of answering, Ryan leans forward and up to press a kiss and then a bite against Ray’s jaw. There’s nothing subtle about it, but the mark’ll probably be lost among all the others.

Ray closes his eyes as Ryan continues to scatter bites and kisses along his jawbone. “Haywood,” he manages, “you’re fucking bleeding.”

“So I am,” Ryan agrees, the words muffled against Ray’s throat. Then he slides his hands under Ray’s hoodie and shirt all at once, fingers spreading across his ribs. “Come here and I have to move around a lot less.” One of his hands has snaked around Ray’s back, applying careful but insistent pressure against his spine. Ray’s will bends slowly under the pressure. They know each other too well by now. Ryan knows every one of his weak spots and is testing every single one of them at once.

Then Ryan bites down against his throat, teeth insistent and deliberate, and Ray’s willpower just snaps in half.

“Fuck,” Ray breathes, “okay, Ry. Jesus Christ.”

Ryan tugs him down onto the couch and Ray goes, sprawling out onto the remaining space. Ryan leans over him. The pressure bandage drops to the floor, basically useless. “I missed you,” Ryan breathes, his forehead pressed against Ray’s. The two of them are so fucking close. Ryan reeks of gunpowder and smoke, something metallic clinging to him - his own blood or someone else’s.

“You just saw me like, under twenty-four hours ago, dude.” The joke is weak, but it gives Ray an opportunity to maneuver one arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “Fuck - this couch is too fucking small.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Ryan mumbles. He goes back to worrying at the hickey he’s left on Ray’s neck, visible to the whole fucking world.

Ryan’s gotten into that - biting hickeys into bruises so dark and harsh that they don’t go away for weeks. It occurs to Ray, even as his fingers tangle in Ryan’s hair and he groans at the sharp stab of pleasure and pain as Ryan’s teeth press against the mark, that those marks are going to be visible long after he leaves.

He’ll be laying there in a hotel room somewhere in Montana or Idaho, and if he presses his fingers along his throat in just the right way, he’ll remember this moment, their bodies moving against each other on a terrible couch in some Los Santos shithole, Ryan the only sure thing in this whole fucking world.

——

He picks up the explosives on Tuesday.

Connor hands him the package. It’s obvious what he’s trying to avoid staring at it, with the way his eyes keep drifting to Ray’s neck. Ray rubs the spot awkwardly. “Fun night?” Connor asks. He’s visibly doing the math between all the news reports on the heist and today, two days apart. Ray knows what he’s thinking, that he picked up some million dollar girl, took her back to his penthouse, and they had all kinds of wild sex, probably in a pile of money.

Ray doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t that at all. Like the world’s worst Clue solution, it was the Vagabond in the safehouse, sucking him off like it was the only place he wanted to be in the whole damn world.

“Oh, yeah.” Ray tucks the package under his arm, winking back at Connor. “Fun fucking night.”

——

He calls Ryan the night before the end of everything. “Hey. Let’s get some breakfast tomorrow. Come pick me up at nine, ‘cause I’m a lazy fuck who doesn’t feel like driving.”

Ryan’s audibly tired, but he manages an annoyed little laugh. “Indulging your laziness, Ray? Really?”

“Fuck yeah, dude. Otherwise I’m not leaving my apartment for like, a week. ‘cause I’m staring down the new Wolfenstein and that’s calling my name right now.”

The sigh Ryan lets out is so long-suffering that Ray has to cough in order to avoid laughing. “I guess I’d better see you before you turn yourself into a God damned hermit for a week.”

“Maybe a week was an exaggeration here.” He adjusts his grip on the phone. “I checked How Long To Beat, and it’s maybe ten hours tops. You’ll see me soon enough. You’ll be sick of seeing me, even.”

“Bullshit. I never will.” Ryan sounds immeasurably fond for a moment. Then he sighs again. Ray can imagine him running a hand through his hair. “Hey. I need to get some sleep. But - nine o’clock tomorrow. I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

“Sure.” He pauses, trying to fight the temptation. But the words slip out anyway. “Have a good night, Ry.”

Across the room, the red light on one of the explosives blinks slowly and steadily. Ray stares at the trigger on the floor. He can’t think about it too much yet. He still has one last thing to do - the last step, the thing he’s been dreading since the moment he came up with this plan. It will involve one more death - but that’s one compared to dozens more between now and the next heist. It is a personal trade.

——

It takes him two and a half hours to find a body double and get him back to the apartment unconscious. It’s some kid about Ray’s height and weight - a little shorter but just as skinny who’s eager for a smoke. Ray smiles and nods - _yeah, got a lighter right here_ \- and knocks him out when the guy turns away from a second, some motorcycle catching his attention.

He drags the man into his car. Thank God for tinted windows and the late hour, because it gives him a minute to have them switch clothes. Ray frowns. The new hoodie’s sleeves are a little too long on the guy in question. But it’s nothing to worry about. No one’s going to care about that in the midst of all the other destruction.

For just a moment, he stares at a man who’s unconscious, face-down, but still breathing softly. And then Ray tries to channel Ryan as best he can. _Cold and precise_ , he thinks, his right fitting around the knife in his pocket. He places one hand on the back of the man’s skull to steady himself, and he jams the knife in right at the base of the neck. The incision is surprisingly small, but Ray sits in the back for a moment as the corpse begins to cool.

He’s done the rest of the work. He’s done the wiring. He’s dropped the implications to both Geoff and Ryan, vague hints that he doesn’t like how close the Morenos are to him, that they’re getting rowdy. He’s cut the camera feeds to this floor using an old trick Gavin taught him years ago and set it to looping footage of an empty hallway. This gives him an all-clear to get the body up to his apartment, timing it when the building is at its very emptiest near two in the morning.

Part of him wants to roll a joint. But Ray needs to be at his best and sharpest for this. He pulls the guy onto his couch and goes about the last arrangements - phones and wallets switched. Ray stands in the middle of his living room and inhales slowly. He has done everything he can. All that’s left is to wait.

He rubs his neck again, pressing down so hard against the bruises Ryan’s left that it hurts.

——

Twenty minutes before nine, Ray walks out into the hallway and pulls the fire alarm. He pulls his hood up immediately and turns a sharp left, angling himself towards the fire escape as people begin to spill out into the hallway. There’s a mix of confusion and panic in the air. That’s good. That’s what he wants. Someone shoves past him hard, and Ray watches as a mother cradles her baby closer as she takes the stairs two at a time.

“It’s okay,” she’s saying, over and over.

The pieces of his rifle are already stored on the bike. It’s just Ray, the keys to the motorcycle, and the dead man’s wallet.

He filters onto the street with the rest of the crowd, pushing towards the street corner. A turn there into the empty lot and he can grab his bike.

Further down the street, he catches sight of the familiar Zentorno. Ryan’s outside and standing next to the driver’s seat, his phone pressed to his ear as he stares up at the apartment building. Ray can imagine the phone up in his apartment going off like no tomorrow, for no one’s ears but a man who’s three hours dead, his spine severed so neatly that Ryan might be proud. It occurs to him that he couldn’t have pulled all of the pieces of this off without the crew, without everything he’s learned from them.

There’s some beautiful irony in that.

He looks for a long moment at Ryan, memorizing the exact way he looks in this moment, right now. The light makes his eyes even brighter and paler, hair neatly styled, stubble a few days old. Then Ryan’s head starts to turn, as if feeling eyes on him, and Ray immediately ducks his head back down, pushing through the crowd. For a moment he thought about it - just walking right up to Ryan and kissing him, telling him _you won’t believe what I’ve just fucking done_.

It is the most tempting thing in the world. Hell, Ryan would probably find Ray's plotting downright hilarious.

Instead, he slips down a side alley and breathes for a moment, the trigger cool and heavy in his grip.

 _You fucking coward_ , he thinks, and then he squeezes the trigger.

The floor of what was formerly his apartment building bursts into flames, and somehow, Ray is both there and a hundred thousand miles away.


	2. spend all night in the company of ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said each chapter was going to be around 7k, and this ended up being 9k, so who knows what I'm doing any more.
> 
> Anyway: this chapter is a fun time for precisely no one.

During Ryan’s third phone call, Ray’s apartment building goes up in flames.

Ryan’s hand twitches against the phone as he stares up at the building, the moment slow and miserable. The fire alarm has been blaring openly into the street for about ten minutes now. Missing the first phone call hadn’t been a big deal. For all Ryan knew, Ray was in the process of getting downstairs. Missing the second had been worrying, but the sound of his phone ringing might’ve just been obscured by the alarm and the people talking out in the street, that soft confusion rippling from one end of the crowd to the other.

Ray was also the type to ignore a false fire alarm. And Los Santos had plenty of those.

There was a moment in the crowd where he thought he saw Ray there, among everyone else. He dismissed it nearly instantly. Ray would die in that stupid purple hoodie he always wore.

Then the street shook, debris rained down from high above, and Ryan’s entire world twisted miserably on its axis.

Screams start instantly. It’s always been odd to Ryan, how quickly people switch from miserable annoyance to shrieks of fear. Ryan pockets his phone. On instinct, his fingers twitch towards the gun strapped to the small of his back. A gun isn’t going to help matters, though. It’ll only make the panic worse. Instead, Ryan shrugs off the jacket and tosses it into the car. He locks the Zentorno all over again and begins to wade through the crowd. No mask today, since they were planning on breakfast, so there’s no intimidation left.

The jacket’s too much of an identifying mark.

He knows all the escape routes from Ray’s building as well as his own. It’s a matter of principle. So he heads up the fire escape to the required floor - the sixth, high enough for a few but not so long that Ray would get impatient with the elevator right - and shoves open the door hard with his shoulder, drawing the gun once he’s inside - again, on principle. Then he slows. The floor’s weakened here, the building groaning underneath the damage. Scorch marks lick along the walls, a few small fires started on the carpet. Ryan uses his boot to put out a few of them as he goes, thinking.

Near the other end of the hall, Ray’s door is blown wide open, the wall cracked next to it.

Explosives. Quite a few of them.

Ryan exhales thickly. He knows what’s in there. He knows, and yet something largely unknown to him - an emotion that others might call fear - settles right in his gut. But he forces himself through the doorway anyway, stepping from singed linoleum to burnt carpet.

There is a body, thrown off the couch.

Ryan stares at it numbly for a moment. Scraps of purple fabric. Dark hair, around Ray’s height, a familiar pair of shitty Converse on his feet. Just about to go downstairs. Just about to see him.

Ryan steps closer. He has to skirt around some rapidly growing flames in the corner of the room. Not a lot of time. Instead, he yanks out the gloves he always keeps in his back pocket and goes about moving the body. When he turns it over, he freezes. There’s a hole - blackened and burnt like everything else - but a hole in the base of Ray’s neck. He begins to put it together. Someone stabbed him right through the spine - an efficiently brutal method, if Ryan gets to say so himself - and left him here in an apartment rigged with enough explosives to destroy any useful evidence.

Whoever did this was smart.

They’re also a criminal, or at least a criminal in the making. This is no toaster oven gone wrong, no incident where Ray’s Xbox fried itself and set off a brutal chain reaction. Someone intentionally did this. Ryan’s brain is already flipping through lists of their enemies, trying to determine which one might’ve done the job. It’s the easiest thing to focus on. If he doesn’t identify an enemy, than he might just walk downstairs and start mowing people down _because_ , because things are wrong and absolutely nothing is going to set them right.

Ray mentioned the Morenos were moving around in the area, getting active. He hasn’t heard much about them besides a violent streak. No mention of them having a demolitions guy, but it wouldn’t be the first time some unknown’s come up from Vegas or down from San Francisco and makes himself known by blowing some part of a major crew sky high.

Ryan stares down at the body. It is difficult to think of it as _Ray_ , when Ray is all about movement and action. This burnt thing lays limp on the ground, arms and legs extended, elbow torn out of its blackened papery skin with the force of the blast. It looks like Ray would if he were in the apartment when bombs went off.

He circles around the body for a moment.

Something seems off. It’s irking him.

But he can’t see it, at least not consciously. Ryan circles again, slower this time.

Then he stops. It’s the shoes.

Moreover, it’s the fact that the shoes are tied. Ray never ties his fucking shoes. The idiot’s almost died about twenty times on heists because he trips over his own damn shoelaces. But here, the shoes are perfectly tied. He leans down to examine them and blinks. Moreover, the few times Ray did tie his shoes, the bows were facing the opposite direction. It’s such an odd detail to remember, but the more Ryan stares at this burnt pair of Converse, the more he begins to remember similar instances.

So someone else tied the shoes - or Ray tied the shoes, but somehow from the opposite direction.

From the opposite direction. Which means —

 _Come pick me up at nine, ‘cause I’m a lazy fuck who doesn’t feel like driving_. And sure, that statement was so perfectly Ray that Ryan didn’t think anything of it. But if he really thinks about it, how better to get someone to see your very definitely not staged death than have them waiting downstairs in the car? He thinks about the crowds of people downstairs, shivering and shocked in the cool morning air. No children. Because it’s a Wednesday, of course, and that means all the kids and teenagers are in school by now.

A woman’s voice, shrieking outside before the explosion, furious, hands on hips. _Which dumbass pulled the fucking fire alarm?_

“Oh,” he says, soft and slow, the noise pulled straight from his chest. “Ray. You dumb bleeding-heart motherfucker.”

He pockets the burnt remains of Ray’s phone. It’s unlikely to have anything of value on it, but maybe Gavin can pull something off of it. He can hear shouts and feet pounding up the stairs. Emergency services. Ryan glances back at the apartment, just once, trying to see if he can recognize anything in all of the destruction.

It’s familiar. And it isn’t.

Then he’s taking the steps back down the fire escape two at a time, out onto the road and heading for the car, pulling his jacket out of the backseat.

——

His phone blows up when he’s en route to the penthouse.

Ryan wedges the phone between his shoulder and his ear and prepares to be shouted at. “Hello?”

Geoff’s voice rattles through the phone. “Ryan. Where the hell are you?”

“In the car.” He shifts his grip on the wheel. “I already know. I was sitting outside, going to pick him up for breakfast. There’s a body in his apartment.” Ryan, as always, picks his words carefully. It’s not Ray in the apartment, because he’s not convinced yet. But there was certainly a body. “It was - bad. Explosion, definitely. I got his phone out before the cops showed up, so we can see if anyone was making some phone calls. Body had a stab wound right in the back of the neck, so I’m guessing he was dead before the actual explosion. Someone’s trying to cover their tracks here.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Geoff’s voice is nearly _shaking_. Ryan’s never heard him like this - never heard him so close to a breaking point that it comes through in his voice, audible and vulnerable all at once. “I - Just get over here. As soon as possible.”

“Geoff. Hold on.” Ryan takes a corner a little too fast, easing back towards the speed limit as a Los Santos squad car pulls out onto the road behind him. The officer doesn’t seem to have noticed, though - too busy pulling over some college girls in a bright pink convertible. One of the girls smiles and laughs, leaning towards the officer. “I don’t think it’s Ray.”

He waits. He can hear Geoff’s breathing, quick and furious.

Then: “What?”

Ryan reminds himself to be patient. Not everyone saw the scene. In fact, no one saw the scene except for him. “I think someone went through a lot of painstaking detail to make it look like Ray’s dead, but I’m not convinced. Sure, there are similarities, but something’s off. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t be like Ray to just disappear - and not just disappear, but destroy his past life to make sure we wouldn’t follow him.”

“Fucking - conspiracy theorist Ryan over here.” Geoff has never tried harder in his life to seem like he’s cracking a joke, and the joke has never fallen quite as flat. Ryan’s grip on the phone is two seconds away from snapping the fucking case in half. He’s furious, and confused, and mostly hurt in a way that he never expected from Ray. “Give me the details when you get here, okay?” The mounting strain is obvious in his tone.

“Alright. Be there in around twenty minutes.”

Geoff makes a noise of assent and hangs up. Ryan tosses the phone into the passenger seat and sets himself on the familiar path to the penthouse. His heart’s practically in his throat, and he knows the only thing keeping him from shattering apart - from spinning the Zentorno around and drifting it right into the median at top speed - is his conviction that something is wrong here. Something is inherently off.

It’s bad. He knows that. When the only thing keeping you from snapping is the courage of your convictions - well, that’s a limited resource at best.

——

The drive gives Ryan some needed time to think.

This has rattled him. He doesn’t remember the last time he was well and truly shaken by something like this. Death happens all the time, everywhere, and it’s not so much the prospect of Ray’s death that’s affecting him. It’s the idea that he might _not_ be dead - that he might have left. People don’t leave the crew. They kill and die together - that’s just how it is, an unspoken pact between them. If Ray was going to die, it was going to be with the rest of them, up in flames or bleeding out as helicopters circled. It was not going to be like this.

Disappearing. Running away. Like always. Like _fucking_ always.

“Ray, you God damned coward,” Ryan mutters, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he waits for the sedan in front of him to realize the light’s turned green.

It is very like Ray to run rather than talk. God, Ryan remembers when they first met and all the times after that, where Ryan would try to gently pry anything at all out of Ray and got a snarky comment in return. It was funny, like Ray always was, but it told him nothing. It took so much time to crack open Ray’s shell even a little, enough to see something of the man’s inner life. Ryan, for all of his dangerous predilections, makes no pretense at hiding what he is.

Ray hides everything.

The thought drifts into his head, bitter and acidic, that maybe he never knew Ray at all. Maybe even that little bit of openness was a performance to hide something else.

——

The penthouse is dead silent.

Ryan tugs off the mask and tosses it onto the kitchen counter. He stands there for a moment, hands curled against the sink, and stares down at the metal. Then he remembers. He tugs out Ray’s phone, blackened and burnt, and leaves it on the counter too. Might as well get everything out in the open. He must reek of smoke by now.

Jack steps up next to him, carrying two empty beers. Everyone else is quiet and definitely drunk in the living room. The two of them stay silent as Jack throws out the two beers, glass clinking against the sides of the bin. “Hey,” Jack says quietly. A hand presses against Ryan’s spine, rubbing in some strange form of reassurance. “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t need to clarify. Ryan stares out at the living room, watching Michael’s curly hair above the television. It’s sitting on footage about the explosion, muted, as statistics on death toll and shots of the destruction roll across the screen.

“I know,” Ryan says, and slides a diet Coke out of the fridge. The fridge door slamming shut is nearly unbearably loud.

“Everyone’s been drinking,” adds Jack.

Ryan pops open the can with a low hiss. “I can tell.” Normally, the Fake AH Crew are a bunch of loud drunks, obnoxious and generally prone to chaos. Today they’re not. But today is not most days. Jack walks out of the kitchen with two new beers, and Ryan follows him a few moments later. The scene that he sees when he walks into the living room is somehow both exactly what he expected and also even sadder. Everyone is arranged on the couch, Jack setting down next to Geoff and handing him another beer. Michael’s slid down on the couch, staring sullenly out the window and slowly swirling his beer. Gavin is nearly curled up in a ball next to him, two beers lined up in front of him.

Geoff looks up. “Hey, Ryan.” He pats the empty space between him and Michael. “C’mon. Have a seat.”

Ryan does so. The chair creaks under his weight.

Michael sits up, leaning forward until his elbows can rest comfortably on his knees. He swings the beer back and forth, staring at the television, before looking over at Ryan. “Heard you were there when it happened.”

“I was outside.” Ryan doesn’t try to deny it. He knows he reeks of smoke.

Gavin sucks in air through his teeth slowly. Then he exhales with a low sigh.

Geoff reaches over and pats Ryan’s shoulder. Evidently, he’s very drunk, but handling it with all the professionalism of a guy who’s good at drinking. “Ryan. Buddy. How’re you holding up?” It’s a question most people ask weeks after the death of a loved one (is that how he’s going to define Ray from here on out, with that most nebulous and detached of terms?). But here it is, under an hour later.

Ryan shrugs. “I’m doing okay.”

Michael scoffs. “Yeah, Geoff. Didn’t hear about any minigun accidents with civilians on the way here, which means Ryan’s either holding himself back intentionally or really is taking this well.”

“I’m sure some unfortunate accidents will happen soon enough,” Ryan agrees. He’s trying to joke, but it’s difficult with that manic energy still ticking away nervously. His fingers tap against his knee, trying to exorcise some of that energy. They’re all trying to joke - to maintain that elusive sense of normalcy, but the words just keep dropping into the air, miserable and flat. Ryan stares down at his diet Coke and then looks back up at the television.

The reporter on screen is in an immaculate suit, his hair slicked back and his tone hitting that generic but perfect note of sorrow. _The Los Santos Police Department will be releasing a statement on this horrific explosion at the top of the hour. But until then, we’ll move to Sandra, with the weather_.

Jack reaches over to pick up the remote. The television clicks off with the slightest hint of static, leaving them in silence.

Geoff sets his beer on the coffee table and rubs his eyes. “Ryan,” he says tiredly, “you said you had some issues with what happened. Now would be the time to air any grievances, so to speak.”

Ryan blinks. Then he leans back against the couch, listening to the furniture creak underneath the adjustment. “There was a body in the apartment. Purple hoodie, about Ray’s height and weight, stabbed through the back of the neck. Probably dead before the explosion went off, so someone was trying to hide evidence. But I don’t think the body was him. Ray, I mean. I’m just - not convinced. Someone pulled the God damn fire alarm before the explosion went off. None of our enemies - not a single one - would bother pulling the fire alarm. Easier if there’s no witnesses, right? So someone took an enormous risk, and possibly caused themselves more trouble, in order to evacuate the building.” He doesn’t dare to mention the shoelaces. Michael would probably say he’s full of shit.

Geoff frowns. “So our culprit’s got a weak spot for civilians.”

“Yeah. I think our culprit’s Ray.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “Okay. Bullshit. Ryan, Ray wasn’t the type to care about civilians. I’ve known him for - fucking years, back when he was first starting out, just me and him. First time a civilian accidentally got themselves killed on a job with the two of us, he just shrugged and reloaded. Fucking ice cold. I know you don’t want him to be - you know, but...”

Ryan closes his eyes, listening to the air conditioning as it turns on softly and begins to whir. “The key word there, Michael, is _accidentally_. I don’t think Ray had a problem with accidents. They always happen with us. I think he had plenty of problems with intentional killing. And you can’t say that there haven’t been more than a few intentional deaths recently, Geoff.”

Geoff’s expression twists slightly, his usual reaction to being criticized in any way, shape, or form. He runs his fingers through his hair and looks over at Ryan, his expression hitting that note of cold seriousness that Ryan hasn’t seen since the last heist, where they were staggering through the streets bleeding and hurt and near dead. “That’s not exactly strong fucking evidence, Ryan. So we’re ignoring Ray’s death based on what - a hunch?”

Ryan sets his can of Coke on the table and laces his fingers neatly together. “You can’t say I didn’t know Ray well,” he points out.

Geoff grumbles something and buries his face in his hands. “Okay. I’ll have Gavin - see if we can get into the footage in his building, poke around. I want to officially put Ray in the grave about as much as you do, Ryan, so we’ll take a look around first.” He is, most definitely, humoring Ryan’s odd little inclinations all over again. It’s surprising he’s gone through with that.

“I left his phone on the counter.” Ryan gestures with a thumb over his shoulder towards the kitchen. Geoff nods and points from Gavin over to the kitchen. Gavin drags himself up and heads over towards the kitchen. Michael pauses with a grimace and gets up to go with him. This leaves Ryan, Geoff, and Jack arranged on the couch in some miserable tableau, gathered around two bottles and a can.

Ryan stares at the blank television screen.

He can feel Jack’s eyes on him. The man’s voice is soft, treading carefully. “Seriously, Ryan. How’re you feeling?” The young guys are out of the room, so it’s time for some honesty. He can hear Michael and Gavin talking softly in the kitchen and some clattering as Gavin disappears into his room, probably to retrieve cables and a laptop.

Ryan sighs. “I don’t know.”

Geoff makes a soft noise of understanding. “Numb, then.”

“Maybe.” It’s not pure numbness. He is feeling too much at once, so much that it all evens and averages out to become nothing at all. Gavin quickly walks by, a laptop and a few different cables tucked under his arm. Ryan throws a glance over towards the kitchen and sees Michael lifting up the burnt remains of Ray’s phone tenderly, carefully peeling off the case that was once as obnoxiously pink as Ray’s signature gun.

He drags his eyes away from that memento. He can see the three of them on the couch reflected in the dead screen, their reflections warped and thrown underneath some strange darkness.

——

Geoff spent a good twenty minutes trying to talk Ryan into sticking around. He tries everything, starting from _it might be easier with company_ to _I just don’t want you to do anything stupid_ and winding down to the primal truth that really, Geoff just wants to keep an eye on Ryan. He, the loose cannon. The unknown variable. _You know how you get sometimes_ , Jack had pointed out over Geoff’s shoulder, his words slow and carefully curated. _When things go wrong. When something upsets you_.

Ryan had quietly reminded them that if he did happen to have some kind of break - which wasn’t really like him at all, so unlikely to unintentionally shatter, and perhaps showed how little the crew sans Ray understood him - the last place he wanted to be was in Geoff’s penthouse. No one could argue with him on that. When he walked into the kitchen to retrieve his mask, Gavin had looked up from his laptop and given him a little wave. Nervous, and tired, and mostly hurting.

Michael sat there on his phone, silent and still.

Ryan placed a hand on Gavin’s shoulder as he went by. _Text me if you find anything interesting_. Gavin had looked up at him, something nearly suspicious in his eyes but quickly disappearing. He nodded once and went back to staring at the screen, three or four programs open to try and salvage what they could from the final days of Ray’s life. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was Michael’s reaction. The phone clattered against the countertop as Michael stood up and wrapped Ryan in a hug. It was stilted but honest, and Ryan’s arms almost froze before he hugged Michael in return.

 _I fucking miss him already, dude_. Michael’s voice was nearly trembling at the edges.

Maybe Ryan wasn’t going to be the first one to break. Maybe it was the rest of them, or maybe it was just the fragile strands binding them together, slowly snapping and fraying.

Ryan grimaced. _Me too_.

——

He drives.

Ryan always drives when things are going wrong. Ray used to make fun of him for it, about how whenever he threw a tantrum, it wasn’t a normal tantrum with shouting and breaking something like normal people. As similar as Michael and him were both about sowing chaos, there was nothing alike about the way they each vented. Instead, it was throwing himself into a car and going on stupid joyrides at a hundred miles per hour. It’s nice to have something to control under his hands, a hunk of metal that responds perfectly no matter what is happening outside. So he goes on a joyride, speeding along Los Santos streets towards the outskirts of the city, where he can hit obscene speeds and no one will stop him.

He starts out along the coast, towards Pacific Bluffs.

The Zentorno’s wheels squeal as he tears around a turn. On the corner, some high school kids whoop and scream as he rights the car, letting the wheel spin itself until he catches it. The smell of burnt rubber fills the car, and Ryan thinks of how easy it would be to roll down the window, pull the submachine gun out of the glovebox, and open fire until their bodies slumped into the street.

He doesn’t. Not yet. Instead he keeps driving northwest.

Eventually, the car rolls to the stop at the edge of a cliff. Ryan gets out and tosses the mask into the driver’s seat, letting the door slam shut behind him. He heads over to the edge of the cliff and sits there, his legs swinging over the drop into the sea. He and Ray used to come here every so often, to talk somewhere out of earshot of the rest of the city. It always felt like you could see into forever from here, the sea stretching out infinitely. Ray had always seemed to like it. They’d pick up some food on the way and just sit for a while.

Ryan had liked those moments.

Now that familiar vista just feels wrong to view alone, like he’s betraying some agreement that he didn’t even know he made.

He has to try to put this all together. He tries to think back to the last time they were out here, and what he and Ray talked about. Ray may have had a surprising ability to keep secrets, but that didn’t mean he was perfect. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. Most of it had been them talking about new games, and the upcoming heist, and anything stupid and not at all serious in the slightest. Ray had been talking about buying a new bike.

It had all seemed so normal.

Something near the end of the conversation prods at Ryan’s memory. He opens his eyes again and stares out at the waves. There was something there. Some worry had twisted Ray’s expression.

The name _Moreno_ drifts across Ryan’s mind. He clings onto it. The Moreno family had been moving into Ray’s area, a slow and steady plague. Geoff had mentioned dealing with them after their next heist - blowing their base sky high and letting Los Santos know that they were in charge. But they just hadn’t gotten to it yet.

Perhaps, rather than putting a positive case together, it will be easier to investigate the evidence against his theory.

Ryan reaches for his phone and begins to dial a familiar number.

——

The Moreno family once had their base of operations in Little Seoul.

Ryan makes sure that fact doesn’t matter any more, because every single member of the Moreno family dies to his hand. It takes him a week. It takes a list of names that expands with each person he kills, pulling more and more details out of them as he slowly tears them to pieces. No one’s heard anything about Ray. No one still alive knows anything about the apartment building. And no one is loyal enough to the fucking Morenos, new and angry but not much else to their name, to keep their mouths shut as Ryan drives a knife into their eye, millimeter by millimeter.

Geoff calls on the third day. Jack calls twice on the fourth and fifth days.

He doesn’t pick up.

Ryan wakes up on the sixth morning, still slumped in his Zentorno with his back aching, to fourteen texts from Gavin buzzing against the dashboard. The last two texts stare back at him.

_ryan please please pick up we’re all worried about you!!! :(_

_geoff’s pissed but you know, in a worried way_

He rubs his eyes and grimaces. It takes him a few tries to get the keys into the ignition, but the engine turns over and reveals that it’s already half past nine. He’s got an hour to make it across Los Santos and intercept another contact of the Moreno family at a small Mexican restaurant, one that he’s never been to before but at least has an address to follow. No time to lose. So he sets one hand on the steering wheel, presses his foot down on the accelerator, and taps away with his right thumb.

_I’m okay. Will drop by soon._

He tosses the phone back into the glovebox so he doesn’t have to listen it to it buzz quite as much. Then he sets off across the city, negotiating traffic and streetlights. After he gets this over with, he’ll have to stop somewhere and actually get something to eat. It’s hard for him to remember exactly what he ate last.

——

“Please,” the man whimpers, his spine trapped underneath Ryan’s boot. He’s face-down against the carpet. It has been one week since Ryan began his systematic destruction of the entire Moreno crime family. This is the last person on the list, some nobody running drugs for the Morenos, named Ben Callahan. “Please don’t hurt me.” He’s crying, a mix of blood and water leaking from his eyes. Ryan already ruined one in the socket, pushing the point of the knife into the eyeball until it popped, aqueous humor draining slowly.

“A little late for that,” Ryan points out. A lot of hurting has already been done today and over this entire long week. It’s been easy to lose himself in the repetitive nature of this kind of violence. To hunt down. To hurt. To gain information. To kill. Over and over again, a series of verbs that require action rather than thought.

Ben coughs and curls his fingers against the carpet. “Please,” he repeats. “I’ve got a kid. I’m just - I’m just trying to get money to help raise her right. Please, man.”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he says cleanly, “I’ve heard all of this shit before. So you don’t know anything about that apartment explosion? Didn’t hear anything about anyone in particular being a target for your friends? Never heard the name Ray before I said it, not in your whole fucking life?”

“No,” Ben breathes. “No, never. None of it. I’m telling you the truth.” He turns his head so he can sort of peer up at Ryan. No mask today. There’s no need, because no one who sees the Vagabond without his mask lives anyway.

Ryan steps off of his back. The man audibly exhales, his fingers spasming against the carpet. When he lifts his head up, Ryan can see the small dark stain on the ground where blood must’ve leaked from his eye and stained it black. Ryan cocks the gun and aims. “I’ll make it quick,” he tells the man on the ground.

The man opens his mouth to scream, and Ryan pulls the trigger.

When he walks outside a few minutes later, pouring gasoline behind him as he goes, Geoff’s leaning against the Zentorno, as casual as can be. He’s got his phone out and seems to be more interested in it than him, sitting on the hood of the car. Ryan freezes and tilts the can of gasoline back upright. His fingers itch to reach inside his jacket and take out the box of matches. Geoff continues to scroll through his phone. “Okay, Ryan,” he says, casual as can be. “We’re looking at - twenty-six different dead guys and seven arsons across seven days, and that’s just everything that’s been on the news.”

“Yes, I’ve been busy,” Ryan snaps. “Would’ve gone faster if you weren’t trying to call me every five fucking minutes.” He places the cap back on the can of gasoline and sets it down, swiveling to face the building. Geoff stays silent as he slips the matchbox out of his jacket pocket and strikes one. The flame flares and, with the gentlest flick of his fingers, he sends it flying towards the open door. The unlit end hits the open door and bounces right into some of the long line of gasoline.

The inferno starts nearly instantly.

He turns back towards Geoff. The man is still on his phone, as if an enormous fire hasn’t been started not a hundred feet from him.

“I guess we’ll up the body count to twenty-seven and the arson charges up to eight too, then,” Geoff mutters. Then he knocks on the roof. “Unlock the car. Me and you are going to head back to the penthouse.”

Ryan smiles, as twisted as the expression feels. “Not too worried about being alone with me in a car, Geoff?”

Geoff’s smile is equally vicious in return. “I don’t think you’d kill me, Ryan. I doubt Ray would look very fucking kindly on that.” Ryan pauses on the other side of the car, very intentionally forcing himself to do nothing. He grimaces at the sheer audacity of using Ray against him. At the same time, though, it works. Ryan has no interest in shooting Geoff. But that annoyance still sits and festers in his throat even as he unlocks the car and Geoff climbs in like nothing happened at all.

Ryan adjusts the rearview mirror as they pull away, watching the fire climb and ignite the rest of the building.

For a long time, neither of them speak. The only noise is the roar of the engine under the hood.

——

Ryan retrieves another diet Coke out of the penthouse fridge. It’s mostly quiet. The chill of the aluminum feels good against his hands, his skin still stained with ash and blood. The shock of it settles his mind down to something present.

When he turns around, he’s staring down the barrel of a pistol. It is not an unfamiliar state for him, but the situation’s all wrong.

First and foremost, Geoff is on the other end of the gun.

“You’re staying in this fucking penthouse with everyone else,” the man says firmly, “until you pull yourself the fuck together. We’ve got people to keep an eye on you, and I’m not taking no for an answer.” Ryan can imagine what Geoff is expecting. A fight, maybe, or for Ryan to taunt him - _what’re you going to do, shoot me, Geoff?_ Instead, he pops open the can with a low hiss. Something moves off to the side. Jack must be here to help if things get messy.

“Fine,” Ryan replies, and starts to walk around Geoff. He sees the obvious surprise on Jack’s face. The look he gives Jack in return is a smile, perhaps, but with something primally wrong with that. “I’ll be out on the balcony if you need me.”

The penthouse is utterly silent. Ryan sits down on one of the chairs on the balcony and closes his eyes. It’s a windy day but sunny all at once - classic California weather. He props his feet up on the table in front of him out of habit, not even needing to open his eyes to go through with the motion. As much as he was resisting the concept of coming back to the penthouse, there is something peaceful about it. It quiets that tension that has been following him down to a low hum instead of a scream. The feeling is something he can ignore if he puts his mind to it.

Footsteps shake him out of his reverie.

Ryan glances towards the source of the noise and opens his eyes. It’s Michael, surprisingly, with another beer and settling in the chair next to him. “Hey,” he says shortly, taking a swig of his beer immediately afterwards. Ryan can’t help but get the feeling that they’re just sending out anyone they can to talk to him in some desperate ploy to calm him down. To control him, like some kind of wild animal. They still think everything he does is about random chaos. But they don’t see the deliberate planning behind each act of violence, the way that it all fits together into a larger goal, and just, really, the only person who ever actually got it was —

Christ, he misses Ray so much that he thinks it might kill him.

“Hey,” Ryan says back.

Michael peers out towards some of the other skyscrapers around them. “Heard about everything that’s going on. Have it out for the Morenos, huh?”

“Yup.” Ryan drawls out the syllable more than he says it, the sound low and languid in his throat. “Ray mentioned them. Figured I should start tying up loose ends.”

Michael frowns down at his beer. “The rest of us want revenge just as much as you do. If you think the Morenos were to blame, Ryan, you could’ve just said something. I would’ve helped you blow every one of those fuckers into the God damn stratosphere if you think they had something to do with what happened. Doing this on your own is going to kill you.”

The fucking naivety.

Ryan laughs. It feels strange after a week of nothing but laughing at the dying or dead. He almost leans over in the chair, setting down the can of Coke so he doesn’t accidentally spill it on himself. “Jesus, Michael. I don’t think the Morenos had a God damn thing to do with what happened. But it’s easier to prove a negative than a positive, right?”

Michael freezes. “So you disappeared for a week,” he says slowly, “to prove Geoff and everyone else wrong about Ray being dead. This is about that fucking conspiracy theory shit you tried to sell —”

“It’s more than a conspiracy theory,” Ryan snaps. “You can’t tell me all of this fits together perfectly.”

“Of course it doesn’t!” Michael stands up abruptly, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Ryan isn’t expecting a fight, but he prepares himself mentally for one at the same time. Michael is the type to brawl over words any day of the week. “It’s real life, Ryan, and real life doesn’t fucking fit together perfectly! You know what happened while you were out? We had to go down to the morgue together, as if the police don’t know exactly who we are, and try to identify this charred fucking _thing_ that looked a hell of a lot like Ray would if he were caught in a giant explosion. We did that without you, because you ran off with this stick up your ass about Ray faking his own death or whatever.”

“Then you all identified the body incorrectly,” Ryan says, perfectly cold. “The fucking weakness of this crew, Michael. You all are so willing to give up as soon as someone presents a nice clean story, as long as the ends mostly tie up right. God forbid anyone do some extra digging, God forbid anyone not buy in immediately because something seems off. All of you are so fucking —”

“So fucking _what_ , Ryan?” Michael is leaning over him at this point, beer dangling uselessly from his fingers. “Just say what you really think, huh? Just let it all out.”

Ryan closes his eyes again for a moment before opening them again. The pause gives him a moment to refine his response. “So fucking quick to buy in.” That’s not what he was going to say at all. He almost said _naive_ , or _stupid_ , or a bunch of words he’d normally toss at Gavin and not the group as a whole. “There’s just - There’s things you didn’t see, things that don’t work. Ray just happens to call me out there to see him die, and someone pulls the fire alarm right before? His fucking shoelaces were wrong —”

“His God damn shoelaces,” Michael repeats, and Ryan instantly wants to travel back in time for about ten seconds and break his former self’s jaw. “Holy shit, Ryan. You’re freaking out over shoelaces. I don’t… I don’t know what to do any more.”

Ryan leans back in the chair and turns to watch as Michael walks slowly back inside, sliding the door back open and just leaving it. With a long sigh he reaches forward and picks up his can of Coke again, trying to soothe his temper with something normal. The wind howls and screams its way through the city.

 _I don’t know either_ , he thinks, and tips the can back.

——

He spends seventy-two hours in the penthouse before he talks Jack into letting him leave. As he’s packing up his things again, throwing them into the bag he brought upstairs, someone knocks on the door to his room. “Come in,” Ryan calls, beginning to lace up his boots. The door creaks as it opens and Ryan stares down at a familiar pair of shoes - Gavin’s, this time. Perhaps Geoff has sent in the weapon of last resort to try and convince him to stick around. Usually Gavin’s influence in the penthouse is the kind of thing that pushes him away.

Gavin closes the door behind him. He keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. “You told me to tell you if I found anything weird on Ray’s phone,” he says slowly. His voice is abnormally quiet. Gavin’s volume at best ranges from very loud to earsplitting, so this means there’s something of merit. And it’s something he doesn’t want anyone else to hear.

Ryan looks up from his laces and leans forward. “I did. You found something?”

“Yeah.” Gavin gnaws on his lip for a moment. “There wasn’t much. It was - pretty burned up. But I got some of the recent calls and texts. A few to a guy named Connor with a Los Santos area code, and more than a few that I’ve never seen before. But I ran the area codes, and most of them were from the San Francisco bay area.”

Ryan stands straight up. He knows Connor. He knows Connor through _Michael_ , of all people, as their local contact for explosives every so often. He’s not the only one, but his name has passed through more than once. And Ray used to talk about San Francisco as somewhere he had visited a few times before joining up with the crew. Very slowly, a timeline is beginning to build itself up in Ryan’s head. “Can you give me both numbers?”

Gavin tugs a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “Already done.”

Ryan nods and takes it. “Thanks, Gavin.” It’s rare for him to actually thank Gavin for anything, which shows what kind of state the world’s in.

He starts to head out the door. Gavin grabs his arm to stop him and Ryan automatically turns out of surprise.

There is an immense amount of worry making Gavin’s eyes visibly widen. “Ryan,” he nearly _begs_ , “please don’t do anything stupid. I know you don’t like what Geoff’s doing here, but he’s worried about you. Spent half his time while you were gone just pacing around the penthouse, trying to get a hold of you.”

“I won’t,” Ryan lies, and tugs his arm out of Gavin’s grasp.

——

Connor yields nothing.

He’s a friendly guy, cheerful on the phone as he informs Ryan that he thought Ray was giving Michael some of these new explosives for Christmas or something weird like that. Ryan sits there in the driver’s seat of the Zentorno, tracing the outside of the steering wheel slowly with his free hand. “He said that Michael wanted them?”

“Yeah, dude.” Connor’s shrug is nearly audible. “Showed up, paid me in cash, got ‘em, and left. Easy transaction.” Ryan’s fairly sure that Connor doesn’t have the capacity to lie. He deals as honestly as one can when working with criminals.

“Alright. Thank you for the help, Connor.”

“Any time, man.”

Ryan makes a note that if even this little bit of information turns out to be faulty, he’s going to find out where Connor lives, put a bullet in his gut, and leave him there until the wound turns septic. Just as a way of making sure that no one tries to fuck him over again.

Before he starts heading towards his apartment again, he checks how many miles it is from Los Santos to San Francisco. Ryan isn’t going to leave right away. There’s things he wants to pick up here first to prepare himself. He needs to lay low and get Geoff to calm down about everything that’s going on. He needs the crew to trust him, as impossible as it seems at this time.

He has to play this smart and slow, even though he would prefer the exact opposite. He just wants to tear something down.

——

Geoff’s voice crackles through the receiver, tinny and shot through with wind. “We’re out at the pier, dude. Just waiting on you to get started on the beach.”

The group decided a week ago - without Ryan’s input, that is - to hold what amounted to a funeral. No body yet, the corpse still caught up in an ongoing investigation. No death certificate. Just a pyre and some drinks, sitting there and watching the last remnants of Ray’s life - some cans of pink spray paint they found in the wreckage, another purple hoodie that was for someone smaller and younger, the charred remains of hix Xbox - go up in smoke. Ryan continues loading the duffle bag into the trunk of his car, slamming it shut before he answers. It’s hard to school his tone into something that isn’t scathing, but he manages.

“I’m not going to be there.”

He circles around the Zentorno and climbs into the seat, as familiar to him as his own bed by now, letting the engine turn over and tick slowly as he waits for a response. There’s nothing but the sound of birds cawing and waves crashing against the dock in his ear. He turns on the air conditioning and continues to sit in silence.

Geoff’s voice has entered that low and deadly place he reserves for moments where he has to take control. “Haywood. I understand you don’t want to let shit go, but I swear to God, if you don’t come over here —”

“So I’m wrong.” Ryan’s free hand closes in a fist around the steering wheel. “Then let me go find out if I’m wrong, Geoff. I’m not Gavin. I’m not going off here on a fucking whim for no real reason. You can call my reasons shaky, but I refuse to give into this shit. Like you somehow know Ray better than me.”

“Michael is here.” Geoff growls the words into the phone. “Michael, Ray’s fucking best friend, who’s known him for most of his life, is _here_ and you aren’t, you fuck. Where are you planning on going?”

“San Francisco. Ray has friends up there.”

“He _had_ friends, Ryan!” Geoff’s tone has begun to climb in pitch and volume. So much for the unflappable gang leader. “He had them, and all of us who counted are here on this fucking pier right now except for you. So get off your high fucking horse, drive down here, and be with your family, before I drag you down here myself. I will do it.”

Your _family_. That’s certainly one way of putting it. Ryan isn’t sure how much he agrees with the idea any more.

Ryan slowly pulls out onto the street, watching the streetlights go by, row by row. “I can’t. I’ll be back in a few weeks, maybe less. A few of my contacts up north have heard things. Sniper for hire. Ray’s trying to get out, maybe, but he still needs enough cash to actually _get out_ , so to speak.”

“If he doesn’t want to be found, maybe you’re fucking disrespecting him by digging all this shit up and going after him. Huh, Ryan? You think about that?”

“He’s making a mistake,” Ryan grinds out, the thin strands of his temper beginning to unravel. “And I am going to inform him of that, very fucking precisely.”

Geoff laughs, the sound sharp and furious. “How, Ryan? Going to stab him until he feels better about coming back? Point a gun at him and ask him _pretty please, just come back to Los Santos, where you clearly don’t want to be_? What’s the fucking plan?” He’s twisting the knife in deeper and deeper, trying to prod at Ryan’s weak points. It’s working. Ryan loathes the fact that it’s working.

Ryan’s foot has begun to just sit on the accelerator, the speed climbing and climbing. His mind has split into two halves - one concerned with not crashing into anything, weaving and dodging between cars, and the other concerned with this fucking phone call. He inhales. _Calm_ , he tells himself, and his temper breaks at the very thought of calming down again. “If you don’t trust me with this,” he says, voice starting to rise in volume to match Geoff’s. “that’s fine, that’s just fucking fine. But you will be proven wrong when I come back with him.”

“Yeah,” Geoff agrees, “in a body bag, putting us right back where we are.”

Ryan’s shouting. He can’t help himself, his gloved hand so tight around the wheel that he can feel the leather stretching under the strain. “I know him! I fucking _know him_ , Geoff, better than I know myself! Don’t you dare turn around and tell me that I don’t.”

Gavin’s voice peters into the call faintly. Ryan must be on speaker. That’s an unfortunate state of affairs. “.... confirmation bias. Y’know, where you see things in a way that agrees with your ide —”

“Gavin,” Ryan says evenly, almost joking, “shut your fucking mouth before I get over there and snap your scrawny little neck.” It’s the kind of joke he’d always make.

No one laughs. Not even nervously.

Michael comes in next, slightly less distant. “Ryan. C’mon. You can go on your fucking wild goose chase after you come over here like the rest of us. You’re not just hurting Ray here. You’re hurting everyone else.”

Ryan laughs. “Funerals are for the living, Michael, not the dead. There’s nothing involving Ray there, not really.”

“We’re here,” Jack points out.

“Yes. You are.” Ryan hits the freeway twenty miles over the speed limit, staring up at the highway signs. He’s heading north. He’s going to be heading north for a long while. “I’m going to go now. I’ll be back in a few weeks, at the worst. I’ll call ahead - or maybe I won’t. We’ll see what happens. Either I’m right, or all of you are, and we’ll find out which one’s true.”

“I’m almost tempted,” Geoff snarls, his voice so loud in the receiver that Ryan nearly moves the phone away from his ear, “to tell you not to come back, you son of a bitch.”

“But you won’t.” It’s the most confident Ryan’s felt in a statement about the crew during this whole conversation.

“I won’t,” Geoff says tiredly. “But you’re fucking killing me here, Ryan. One death is enough for the foreseeable - forever, honestly. The last thing I need is for you to run yourself so ragged that you get yourself killed.” Some guilt winds in through all of Ryan’s defenses. As angry and hurt as he is by all of this - and he knows that’s what all of this is - he doesn’t want to hear Geoff nearly falling apart at the edges.

He focuses on one of the highway signs up ahead. “Jack,” he says evenly, “take care of Geoff.” Then he hangs up and adjusts his grip on the phone to turn it off. It goes into the glovebox with everything else he doesn’t want to look at right now. It feels good to have a discernible goal. It feels like it did when he had the list of the Moreno family associates, things he could cross off a list and feel like there was momentum pushing him somewhere, anywhere at all.

——

During his stay in the penthouse, he and Jack had ended up on the balcony alone together, leaning on the railing and peering down at the city lights below.

Jack looked over at him. _You loved him_.

Ryan stared down at the tiny dots of light that would be streetlamps at the ground level. Perspective made them look entirely different than what they were. _As close as we could get, I think_.

_Did you tell him?_

Ryan shook his head. _No. I didn’t._

 _I think he knew_.

Ryan chuckled a little to himself. _I wish I could be that sure_.

Being unsure of nearly everything sits on Ryan’s chest like a physical weight, pressing downwards with building intensity. He isn’t sure what he’s going to find in San Francisco, if anything at all. Perhaps he’ll arrive in the city and a void will still exist where Ray should be, and he’ll have to slink back and apologize to Geoff. Perhaps he’ll find Ray, alive and whole and healthy and hating him more than anyone else in the crew. Or perhaps he’ll find Ray exactly as he remembers him, a person crystallized and preserved perfectly in Ryan’s memory.

Sometimes he thinks it’s easy to see people as butterflies to pin down in a case, splayed and with their brightest colors revealed. He almost can’t imagine doing that to Ray - how many false layers he’d have to peel back, how many fake selves he’d have to annihilate.

Throughout these weeks, Ryan’s been asking that version of Ray he thought he knew, the one that may have only existed within the familiar arena of his own skull, a single question: _who are you, really?_

The answer is closer now than it's ever been before.


	3. tried to get close to you again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think a lot of you might be... discontented with this ending. It defies a lot of convention, both on the angst and the happy side of things. But this is the realm of the niche fic, kids, and the ride is always going to be wild.
> 
> I thought about an epilogue, but I think I like leaving it right here.
> 
> Also: happy holidays! I'm sorry if this damages the holiday spirit a little, but to me, the holidays are nothing without a little bit of melancholy. :)

The waitress smiles at him, her voice a high-pitched trill. “The usual, honey?”

Ray nods and smiles. She brings out a cup of coffee and a cheese omelette with hash browns and two strips of bacon, the plate too hot to touch. He pays her ten bucks. He doesn’t ask for change. He slips back out into the parking lot and over to his bike, climbing on. Today he has an appointment to keep, to put it mildly. But there are things he cannot interrupt just for a job, and he has begun to build the rest of his life around these moments.

Really, forming habits helps him solidify who he is now. It separates him from who he was before. Ray likes a schedule. He likes routine. He likes to visit the same diner in the middle of San Francisco every morning, bright and early. He’s got a new pair of Vans, already coated with dirt along the soles. He’s almost tripped over his fucking shoelaces about eight times now. He’s gotten some shiny new illegal bay area plates to replace the Los Santos-themed one. He is someone else. He does the same work, but mostly he sits in his motel room and tries to pick a place to go. Maybe Kansas. Maybe Missouri. Yet every state so far just sounds wrong and awkward in his mouth when he says it aloud.

Nevada. South Carolina. Maine.

He can go anywhere, do anything, and instead he sits in a diner every morning and thinks about doing nothing instead.

He can’t leave. He can’t stay. Schrodinger’s cat caught in a matter of location.

There is always some kind of blip on the radar to keep him from leaving, some excuse he digs up to keep himself nailed here, in San Francisco, a city so different from Los Santos but also just similar enough. Today it’s an actual job. Ray follows the directions he read up on this morning and drives out to the middle of the financial district. He sneaks his way up the fire escape to the roof. He shoots a man walking out of the building, hair grey and a suitcase swinging in his hand. The suitcase bursts open as it hits the ground and Ray watches as papers spiral away down the street, picked up by the same breeze that sends people’s shocked shrieks from one end of the city to the other.

He packs up his rifle. He slips the case over his shoulder and slides his hands into his pockets, and he hums that new Taylor Swift song that’s been played to death on the radio as he takes the stairs two at a time.

Everything changes, or nothing changes at all.

——

“The usual?” The waitress’s voice is a special kind of shrill this morning.

Ray nods. The waitress nudges open the kitchen door with her hip twenty minutes later and brings him a cup of coffee and a cheese omelette with hash browns and two strips of bacon, warning him all over again that the fucking plate’s hot. He smiles in response. He drinks his coffee black to try and force some kind of change. He slides a ten dollar bill across the counter. No change necessary. He heads back out into the parking lot, fog pouring into the street.

A text arrives from a new number. _Heard you’re taking jobs of a certain variety_.

_Sure am_ , Ray replies, and leans back on his bike to wait for a response, his eyes sliding shut.

At night, he mostly sits in the motel room and stares down at his map of the United States, shutting his eyes and letting his finger land on some new unknown town. Maybe this one. Maybe this time, it’ll sound good enough. Somewhere in Montana, or Missouri, or Virginia.

It never sounds good enough. No. Not that. It never sounds _right_ , like somewhere he’d be able to call home.

——

Diner. The usual. No change.

No fucking change.

——

On the twenty-fifth day of his self-imposed exile, Ray walks out of the diner as the asphalt’s beginning to heat up and sights a familiar shape, its back pressed against an equally familiar car, jacket black and blue and white like some kind of sickly bright bruise against the street.

He freezes, heart like a jackhammer against his ribs. His hands don’t know what to do with themselves, so they stay still too.

Ryan smiles over at him, the motion slow and careful. “Nice bike.” The words crack the frozen coating on Ray’s mind just enough to force him to move.

The two of them draw at the same moment, Ray staring down the barrel of his pistol only to be met with the end of Ryan’s own gun. They are always moving like this, in tandem, in concert. Ryan steps forward and Ray stands his ground, feet moving apart. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Ray grinds out, his grip tightening on the pistol. Ryan’s eyes snap to his hands for a moment before meeting Ray’s steady gaze again.

“I’d think that’s pretty obvious.” Fucking smart ass.

Ray grits his teeth. “I didn’t ask you to come whisk me back to Los Santos, Ryan. So get the fuck back in your car or whatever and drive back down there. I swear to God there’s nothing for you here.”

Ryan takes a step forward again. Ray shuffles back despite himself. Close combat is not his speciality. It is, however, Ryan’s, which makes this situation exceptionally dangerous. Worse yet is Ryan’s expression - or lack thereof, just an utter blankness in his eyes. Ray can’t read anything. And he’s the resident Ryan expert.

Or he was, at any rate.

“You’re here,” Ryan says quietly.

There are a thousand things Ray could say. He wants to tell Ryan to kiss him or maybe just to kill him so he doesn’t have to think any more. He says the thing he wants to say the least, because it seems to regularly be the best option. “Fuck off, Ryan.”

Then he has to watch as Ryan lowers his gun and slips it back into a holster along his back. Ray, however, does not follow suit. It is a matter of principle at this point. Instead, Ryan keeps walking forward until he’s mere inches away, Ray’s grip almost shaking a little. “Why the hell did you leave, Ray? What broke you? Christ. Just - Just tell me, because I will move heaven and earth to make it right.” It’s the most desperate he’s ever sounded in all the time Ray’s known him, his voice scraping and scratching at itself in his throat. He sounds like if Ray turns his back on him again, he might just eat himself alive.

Ray goes from shaking to shouting in about a second flat.

He is so tired of being afraid - of being terrified of Geoff sending someone else after him, being terrified of Geoff sending _Ryan_ after him, and now, his worst fears realized. The fear has burnt itself out of him like that. “That’s exactly what I don’t want you to do, Ryan! We got here by you and the crew insisting that - that things were fine, that things were okay, and me being too blind and fucking stupid to tell you that it wasn’t! Besides, would anyone have fucking listened to me if I —”

“I would’ve listened.”

“Bullshit, Ryan.” Ray almost snarls, jabbing the barrel of the gun against Ryan’s chest. “Bull. Fucking. Shit. Maybe you would’ve listened, but the second I said _maybe we should be careful about killing civilians_ , you would’ve laughed in my fucking face. And I would have deserved it for convincing myself that you would change just because I asked you to.”

Ryan stares at him blankly.

Then he exhales. “This is actually about civilians.”

“Of course it is.” It isn’t just that, but it is, in its purest form, also _just that_. “What the fuck else? Did you think I was mad because Gavin kept stealing my shit by accident, since he doesn’t remember what the fuck he owns? The crew was killing _people_ , Ryan. People with - friends and lives and kids, Ryan, fucking kids! I looked some of them up after I left. There are kids sitting there without parents right now because you got a little too trigger-happy, or Michael detonated a bomb and they were just in the wrong place.”

He can _see_ Ryan’s utter lack of understanding. “The city was like that before we got there, Ray. It’ll be like that after we’re all dead. Sometimes they leave kids behind.” The way he says it is so perfectly impartial. Death is rational. Normal, even.

Ray laughs.

He can’t help himself. It’s this injured chuckle that rises right up from his gut, dark and boiling over with rage. “I know people die. We both know that. And maybe, just maybe, the last thing we should be doing is contributing to the body count. But apparently you don’t care, Ry, so let’s just sit down and do the fucking profile for the psychopath, right? Was it your mom? It’s usually the mom, right, treating you like shit, making you feel like you aren’t a man? Did a girl dump you and you decided to go apeshit? Figured out killing was a good solution? How the fuck did you get here, where killing people is fine because they aren’t really _people_ to you — ”

“Ray,” Ryan says, his voice dangerously quiet.

Ray presses forward, grinding the barrel against Ryan’s sternum like he wants the gun to just punch through the bone on its own and kill him. “What if I had just been me minus the sniping and everything else, Ryan? What if you had met me on the street and I was working at a GameStop, nine to five like a normal person? Would you have even been _capable_ of caring if I wasn’t just as fucked up as you were? Huh?”

Ryan’s voice remains even. “I don’t know. Thankfully, we live in this universe, so I don’t have to find out.”

Ray can feel the disgust rising in his gut. It feels good to remind himself why he had to get out. It feels good to have the evidence right there in front of him. Consequences aren’t a discussion with Ryan Haywood, Vagabond and fucking Mad King and really, they’ve just been living a fantasy life where they inflict things and nothing comes back around. Surprise, fucker: karma has come back around. Just not in the way they all expected. Ray didn’t want to be the fucking arbiter of justice, the last good guy, because that in itself is a lie at best.

But maybe he has to be, because there’s no one else left.

“God,” he spits, “I fucking hate you.”

Silence sits between them. Ryan’s expression doesn’t move.

His hands do, however, and Ray barely gets a twitch of his finger on the trigger before Ryan’s wrenching the gun out of his hand like it’s nothing. Ray feels the bones in two of his fingers creak with the way Ryan yanks them to get the gun away. He scrambles to regain control, about to reach for a second gun inside his jacket, smaller and weaker but still usable. Very abruptly Ray’s staring down the barrel of his own pistol, held in Ryan’s perfectly sure hand. Ray freezes, animal instinct keeping him still. If he doesn’t move, maybe Ryan will just somehow forget about it and let him slink back over to his bike.

“Get in the car,” Ryan says softly. That means he’s getting dangerous, the quieter and more fervent he gets. “We need to talk, and we’re not doing it here.”

“Fuck you.” Now Ray’s mouth is moving on its own, his mind rattling away with fear. He knows what Ryan can do with a gun. His body twists away on reflex at his own epithet, expecting the pain of the bullet. Non-fatal is somehow worse, because it means Ryan wants this to last. He wants to let the pain do the job for him.

Nothing happens.

Ryan’s breath pushes through his clenched teeth. “Ray,” he says, still in that deadly soft tone, “get in the fucking car before I knock you out and throw you in the God damned trunk.”

“Going to cart me back to Geoff?” Ray says with something between a smile and a grimace.

“Nope.” Ryan turns off the safety with a click. “So get in the car. We’re not going back to Los Santos. I just don’t want to talk about this out in public.”

Ray stares at the barrel of the gun some more.

He bites down hard on his lip for the stab of pain and the taste of blood. Ryan’s eyes snap to the motion, but his aim doesn’t even waver. Nothing wavers. Nothing shifts. Ray very abruptly wishes he hadn’t spent the last two weeks practically screaming out for something to change in the routine he’s set for himself. It’s all shifted, it’s all changed, and not in the way that he wanted.

“Fine,” he snaps, and turns towards the familiar Zentorno. There’s a new dent that he doesn’t remember being there near the grill. It could be from Ryan hitting a streetlamp in a fit of rage when he left; it could be from hitting a body with a sickening thunk, bones cracking and breaking under the force.

“Thank you,” Ryan says, his voice turning sickly sweet with that Georgia drawl.

Ray wishes he had pulled the trigger on Ryan a minute ago, or maybe over three weeks ago on the night of his last heist, Ryan’s paint lit up dimly under Los Santos lights outside of the safehouse. Or, really, maybe he should’ve fired when they first met forever ago, Ryan an unknown presence in the penthouse during that first fateful meeting and Ray pulling a gun on instinct.

Mistakes like that come back to haunt you in this business.

——

They stop on a cliffside outside of San Francisco, overlooking the sea. In the distance, ships move in and out of the harbor. Ray gets out immediately, nerves singing away, and turns back to the car in time to see Ryan leaning against the open door, gun casually pointed over the roof of the car right at him. Okay. So they’re still doing the whole pointing a gun thing. Ray kind of wishes he had gotten the fucking memo on that.

Neither of them speak for a few long moments. A gull circles below near the bottom of the cliff, its call nearly a scream in the midday air.

Ray’s entire body nearly recoils as he starts to speak. “Go ahead and pull the fucking trigger if you want it so bad.” He can see that familiar want in Ryan’s face, that look like he’s about to snarl and rip something apart with his teeth. Instead, Ryan paces around the hood of the car, aim perfectly trained on Ray’s head the whole while, and stops when they’re a mere three feet apart.

He’s also blocking Ray’s path to the edge of the cliff, just in case he felt like sprinting and throwing himself off. Which he did, a little bit. He can’t say Ryan doesn’t know his tendencies very well.

“Things have gone very wrong since you left,” Ryan tells him, voice still so detached that it makes Ray want to gag on something sour in his chest. “The crew isn’t the same. None of them. Michael’s devastated. So is Geoff, as much as he tries to play it off.” Ray can’t even tell if this is a guilt trip. It is delivered so casually, in the same tone one might use to deliver the weather. “You should come back. It won’t fix everything. I’m sure Geoff’ll be royally pissed. But it might be a good start.”

“Maybe,” Ray replies, his tone careful, “if the crew was going to fall apart that fast, Ryan, then it shouldn’t have existed in the first place.”

A particularly strange series of expression flits across Ryan’s features. It looks like rage, and then amusement, and then sorrow so deep and genuine that it’s like someone slid a cold knife between Ray’s ribs. “You’re willing to give all of that up. You’re willing to give _us_ up - for a fucking moral crusade.” Ryan’s tone makes it sound despicable, as if Ray’s the real villain here. The sheer audacity of guilt, of not being able to forget.

Fine. If that’s how Ryan wants to look at it, then it’ll make Ray desperately sawing at the ties that bind them even easier. Maybe he’ll even be able to go through with it this time.

“Yeah,” Ray says, “I am.”

Something shakes and shudders in Ryan’s shoulders. His aim falters. It’s a mere second where he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the gun. “I don’t believe you,” he says steadily, his shoulder and arm tensing again.

“Cool.” Ray’s feet move apart just a little, knees locking in place. It makes him feel bigger here, even if he’s just standing securely in the jaws of the beast. “Not my fucking problem what you do and don’t believe, Ryan.” His tone is ice fucking cold, like when he first started out in this business and decided that he was going to be untouchable. It feels good to be that version of himself again, if only for a second, like a fraying coat he’s pulling on for one last ride.

“What changed?” Ryan is doggedly asking questions, trying to pry something out of him. It’s obvious with the way he’s staring, gaze constantly panning up and down Ray’s body as if to pick out some strange note in his body language. “Michael knew you when you first started out, Ray, and he told me that you didn’t give a single fuck who died along the way to a finished job. So something had to change. Who was it?” He wants someone to blame. That’s what he’s digging for.

“Maybe I fucking changed, Ryan,” Ray snaps, his temper properly fraying itself down. “Maybe it’s just that simple. I know you want everything to be fucking complicated, but it’s not, okay? Sometimes there’s no one to blame.”

Ryan lowers the gun and storms forward. In a moment of sheer willpower, Ray refuses to move back, even if instinct wants to send him skittering back towards any kind of cover. A gloved hand closes around Ray’s jaw, the first time they’ve really touched each other in nearly a month, and forces his head up. Ryan’s eyes are the same blue as always, nearly turning grey in the light. “I still don’t believe you. If someone’s blackmailing you, if one of the crew did something to piss you off this bad, just _tell me_.”

Ray tears himself away, staggering a step or two backwards until his legs hit the front of the Zentorno. He places his hands behind him onto the hood to steady himself. The metal is cool against his palms. The sensation calms him down, breath rattling in his chest. It hurts to see Ryan like this - hurts to see Ryan hurting, which is part of why he didn’t want to see him again. He still doesn’t know what they are, what they _were_ , and not knowing makes it so much more difficult.

Ryan stays at a distance.

“I’m tired,” Ray says finally. “I didn’t want you to show up here. It’d be easier for both of us if you drove me back to the diner, dropped me off, and drove back south as fast as possible. In fact, I tried to make finding me pretty fucking hard. How’d you do it?”

A smile twitches at Ryan’s mouth. It seems awkward and stilted. “Couple loose ends. Gavin found some of the numbers you called here on your phone. I talked to Connor and he told me that you mentioned giving Michael the explosives you bought. Found some things wrong with the scene in your apartment. Put it all together and drove up here instead of going to the funeral.”

“Oh.” It’s more intricate than Ray expected. His fingers curl against the painted metal. “They’re having a funeral.”

“ _Funeral_ ,” Ryan muses, “is a strong word.” There’s a wind coming off of the sea blowing his hair in a way that makes him look windswept rather than messy. “Your body - or rather, your body double, I suppose - is still at the coroner’s. Geoff got tired of waiting, so they took your Xbox and rifle down to the beach and had a little funeral pyre. It was good for them, I think.”

“You didn’t go.”

“Why would I?” He sounds legitimately bewildered at the mere suggestion. “I knew where you were. Here. Not there.”

_Here and not there_. He makes it sound so simple. Ray doesn’t even know where he is, really - how he’s both here in San Francisco but also permanently bound in Los Santos streets at once. He spilled blood there. He bled there himself. That binds you to a place like that, where blood is the trade of choice anyway.

Ray folds his arms against his chest. “You want me to lay it out for you, then? Plain and fucking simple, and then you’ll fuck off?”

Ryan still seems so amused by everything Ray does. Before it was endearing. Now it’s just frustrating. “No promises. But it would be nice to figure out what the fuck’s going on in your head for once.” There’s an accusation there. It’s not direct, but Ray knows Ryan well enough to read between the lines. Ryan’s angry about Ray lying. In his meager defense, it wasn’t even lying. It was omitting the truth, and forging a certain kind of other truth with it.

Ryan is the kind of person who plays in absolutes - in absolute chaos, in absolute truth, in being absolutely right. Ray has always quietly disagreed. Nothing is that clear. There are levels and layers to truth especially, where one kind of truth is perhaps more true than even what really happened.

The truth of telling something is that highest level of truth. Of telling a story. Of concocting a new life, perhaps, or plotting how to destroy an old one.

“You remember when it was about the money? The heists, all of it?” It sounds so juvenile to say it now. They could not be further removed from that reality, when they first started out and the most exciting thing in the fucking world was splitting the cash at the end of the heist, arguing over who had done what. It wasn’t easy. The work was never easy. Clean isn’t the right word either. But there was something pure about it, in all its criminal glory.

The change happened there. The money is an afterthought now, exchanging hands if Geoff doesn’t just forget about it on the way back to the penthouse. They compare other things instead, Michael raving about the stunts they pulled while Ray and Ryan’s kill counts climb higher and higher. They have all the money they could ever need. Ray could have taken his cash and retired to beachfront property in the Bahamas if he wanted to.

“It’s always about the money.” Ryan’s playing at confused and Ray just wants to tear into him for it. Ryan Haywood is many things, but a fucking idiot is not one of them.

Ray flattens his fingers against the hood again to keep them from curling into fists. “Yeah. It was. It’s not anymore. And you can argue all you fucking want, Ryan, but you know I’m right. It stopped being about the money a year or so ago. Hell, Geoff forgot to pay us for a _week_ this past June. That wouldn’t have happened at the beginning. We stopped needing the money to not starve to fucking death. Turns out, hey, big God damn surprise - when we get out of needs, out of _I need this money to pay rent and not fucking die_ , and into wants, we turn into shitty people really fast.” Maybe even shitty enough that they can ignore casualties.

“So you’d rather - what?” Of course Ryan’s arguing. “All of us out on the street? Barely able to make rent or buy food? You’d rather have the whole crew desperate and fucking starving just to let you sleep a little better at night?”

“Don’t put fucking words in my mouth.” Ray steps forward despite the fear still seething and grinding away in his gut. “I never said that.”

Ryan’s mouth curves into something immeasurably cruel. “Implications still matter.”

“Implications?” Ray’s voice begins to tip upwards again. Here he thought he might’ve made some progress with a well-reasoned monologue, which is something he thought Ryan would appreciate. He wants to get in Ryan’s face - wants to _hurt_ him in some way besides just the pain of leaving. He wants direct action. “Fuck off, you stupid self-righteous _bastard_. You always want to be proven right, and sure, maybe you were right this time about where I was, but you’re not right about a single other fucking thing.” His finger jabs at Ryan’s chest, vicious

They are mere inches apart. Ryan lowered the gun as he moved forward, seemingly unwilling to just shove the gun between them and use the threat to keep them separated. Unsurprising. Ryan would rather have them close at all times, something less obsessive than it sounds.

Ryan’s smile softens slightly at the edges. It gentles his entire face, bringing it down from terrifying to familiar. “You haven’t changed, have you? Not really.”

Ray freezes.

He has been doing nothing but changing - nothing but transposing himself and transforming pieces of himself. But one simple statement from the man who has known him the best besides Michael over these past years pulls him to a halt. He has changed. He has. That was the whole point of this - to force change for all of them in the most brutal fashion possible. And if he’s failed at that, then there really wasn’t a point to begin with. He can feel the floor beginning to fall out of this whole plan, so he drags himself back and secures himself.

He wishes Ryan was wearing the mask as the Vagabond. It would be easier to stare down something faceless, almost comedic in its obvious malevolence, and tell it to go fuck itself. It’s harder with Ryan Haywood’s features, soft and familiar.

For a moment, Ray thinks of a dozen things he could say.

Then he just moves past the shape of the man next to him towards the cliff edge. He can hear Ryan’s footsteps speeding up behind him, as if ready to drag him back if he jumps. Instead, Ray sits down, letting his legs hang off the edge. He stares out towards the sea. Ryan settles beside him, hands set behind him to prop himself up. “So,” Ryan says finally, “what’s the plan?” A laugh crawls up Ray’s throat and chokes him, the noise he makes merely soft and stunted. They ask each other that every time on a heist, on the run and switching vehicles - _what’s the plan, what’s the fucking plan_?

It’s the softest it’s ever been, and somehow the worst it’s ever been all at once.

“Good question.” Ray runs a finger along the dirt and rock next to him. “I know you’re not going home without me, and I’m not going back with you.”

“You still call it home,” Ryan points out.

Ray buries his face in his hands and groans. “Can you stop trying to score fucking points here?” And Ryan goes quiet and dark all over again. A hand reaches across the space between them and presses against Ray’s spine, rubbing soothing circles across his back. It’s a cheap shot, but it works. Some of that residual tension drains out of Ray’s body. The touch is all it takes. Ray hasn’t cried in years, but he feels the urge in his head and his gut all at once. He wants to go home. He does. But he can’t.

Finally, Ryan’s hand draws back. “At least let me take you on a joyride,” he says mildly. “Like we used to.”

Ray’s shoulders still before the strange hitched breathing can start. He stares down at the sea as it crashes up against the cliff below them, foam spraying into the air. They’re too far up to feel that cool splash of water against his heels. He wishes they were closer. When he looks up, Ryan’s expression is still and pensive. He waits. So does Ray.

Nothing moves. “Okay,” Ray says, so quiet that the word is a mere croak.

Ryan’s face lights up in a brilliant grin. He stands, boots loud against the bare rock under them, and reaches down to offer Ray a hand up.

Still on the ground, Ray pauses one last time. Then he reaches up, and he goes.

——

“Are we going back to my bike?”

Ryan shakes his head as a form of reply as he spins the Zentorno’s wheel, pulling them back onto San Francisco streets. He pulled the mask out of the glovebox as the engine purred to life, the familiar skull replacing anything warm and soft about the man Ray knew. He’s drumming his fingers on the wheel as he parks across the street from a small row of shops. The rhythm is quick and erratic. It’s the closest Ryan Haywood gets to nervous.

Ray grimaces. He wants his own weapons. Then he has to watch as Ryan leans forward absently and tugs the glovebox open. It’s one of Ray’s old pistols - something that must’ve been mostly saved from the fire. He sets it on the dashboard without a word, three magazines kept inside the nearly disarmingly neat glovebox to match.

Ray tilts the barrel towards the light, examining it. “You been using my gun?”

“You’re a dead man, supposedly,” Ryan points out, peering out towards the street ahead of them. “Not like you were going to use it. And it’s a nice pistol. Also, it’s the only one you owned that wasn’t bright pink.”

Despite himself, Ray snickers at the thought of Ryan going through his weapons and getting frustrated with every one he picks up that’s hot pink. His hands reach forward on autopilot and load the gun, slipping the two spare magazines into his jacket pockets. The weight sits secure against his stomach, familiar enough to ease the new sting of nervousness. He steps out of the Zentorno as Ryan does, the two of them already synchronized.

“Just some stores? Really?” Ray asks.

Ryan smiles just slightly. “There’s a lot of foot traffic around here during lunch.” It’s just past eleven now. Small groups of people are wandering towards the McDonald’s on the corner or some of the local restaurants, heads bent towards their phones.

Ray’s own smile begins to tilt. “Ry,” he says slowly.

“Don’t be a pussy about this, Ray,” Ryan Haywood says idly, raising his pistol in the air and squeezing the trigger twice. For just a second, Ray imagines vaulting over the hood of the Zentorno, bringing his meager weight crashing into Ryan’s body just fast enough, and knocking him to the ground before it can start. But it’s like his body is a thousand miles away from the impulse, his hand barely touching the hood and his foot just starting to push off the ground when the gun goes off.

The entire block seems to slow and freeze. “Ryan,” Ray says again, right before someone points at Ryan in the skull mask and the car, plastered across national news headlines for months now, and shrieks.

People scatter. Ryan’s body snaps into the low practiced stance of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing with a gun. He moves and Ray, still a sniper even now, sees the glint of metal in the crowd. It’s a man in a t-shirt and jeans, innocuous, but he swings a pistol out of a concealed holster by his side and brings it up to bear. Ryan’s half-turned the other direction, concerned with the closest storefront, and Ray reacts before he can think. It’s his first instinct - _protect Ryan_ \- and his body follows through, bringing the gun up smoothly and firing just as the crowd pulls itself apart.

Ryan spins around at the gunshot and turns a few degrees to follow Ray’s aim.

Some crazed bystander’s foot collides with the dead man’s gun and sends it spinning towards Ray. Ray’s foot lifts just enough to set the toes of his shoe on the barrel and trap it there.

“Thanks,” Ryan says coolly.

“No problem,” Ray mutters. Then Ryan’s gloved hand folds around his wrist and tugs him towards the storefront. Ray keeps scanning the crowd now that they’ve gone and done it as they approach the storefront that Ryan’s focused on. It’s a fucking gun store. Of course that’s where they’re going first.

The owner of the store shouts something and starts to draw a gun out from under the counter the second they burst inside. Ryan barely looks at him before blowing away with two short pops, blood splattering against the glass display. The man slumps forward, head cracking the display. Ray finds himself staggering in Ryan’s wake, outside of himself. He watches as Ryan shoves the corpse off of the display, peering down at the shotgun and pistols neatly arranged inside. He yanks a knife out of his pocket. Even from this distance, Ray knows that knife. It’s the spring-loaded one, with the breaker pommel on the end. Ray steps back just in time for Ryan to slam the pommel against the corner of the glass panel. The glass spiderwebs and cracks immediately, breaking apart, shards scattering across the dark metal of the weapons underneath.

The only thing that shocks Ray out of his reverie, of thinking about the word _break_ caught in his throat, is Ryan tossing a heavier pistol to him like it doesn’t weigh a damn thing. Ray barely catches it, turning it over in his hand. Heavier caliber, fires slower. Constantly moving closer to the feel of a sniper rifle, but never quite there. Ryan drags the shotgun out of the case and retrieves the box of ammunition next to it. He spills rounds into his pockets and begins to load the gun as Ray turns his aim and attention to the door.

The sirens are getting closer. Ray curses a blue streak and listens to Ryan smashing another display case behind him. He could slip out the back right now while Ryan’s distracted and disappear. It would be that easy to toss the gun aside and run, to get back to the diner, hop on his bike, and tear out of this place at lightspeed.

His foot scrapes along the tile, the beginnings of a step towards the back door.

Ryan cocks the shotgun behind him. Ray freezes before he can even think about how ridiculous that is. “Cops are almost here,” he says calmly.

“I know.” Ray checks the safety on the pistol again

Outside, a megaphone blares out the standard message: _this is the San Francisco Police Department. Put down your weapons and come outside with your hands in the air_.

Ryan tilts his head towards the back door. Ray nods, grinning despite himself, and follows as Ryan’s shoulder breaks down the door like it doesn’t weigh a damn thing. As much as he hates to admit it, he missed them. He did. It’s an addiction, the thing he was trying to slowly wean himself off of and expel from body and mind. But here it is, back in the one person that Ray’s body finds itself drawn towards irrevocably.

He’s fucked. He’s so, so fucked, and he knows that this is only going to be fixed with a bullet.

——

They kill eight cops within ten minutes as they get out of the store. Or Ryan does most of the killing, and Ray watches. He always watches anyway. He forces himself to count every body falling, as easy as it would be to drift in a disjointed miasma of violence and blood. Watching Ryan is the same as always, killing like it’s parts of a symphony that all slot into the next. He shoots two cops in the head and they topple into each other, a perfect chain reaction. A car spins out into a storefront, glass exploding and mannequins toppling like stiff corpses onto the sidewalk. Surely Ryan must be grinning behind that mask. Ray knows it without even having to think about it all that much.

Ray mostly stays behind him, taking a few mild potshots in order to look busy. He ends up having to kill two cops after one yanks his rifle out of the trunk and trains it at both of them. The sun shines down through the thin veil of fog, cutting the thinning light into more pieces, and Ray swings the gun up and shoots the cop in the head. He’s hoping Ryan doesn’t notice, but when he turns back towards the path of destruction they’re forging (towards the motorcycle parked on the corner, if Ray knows anything about Ryan), the skull mask is tilted towards him.

He doesn’t say anything. Neither does Ryan. It feels like all the air and the sound has been sucked out of the street.

Ryan’s arm moves back. Apparently he’s gotten into the habit of carrying grenades, and Ray watches numbly as the man’s arm tilts back and he throws. The grenade bounces and rolls and stops against a squad car.

All of the sound careens back into the moment when the grenade goes off. The car rocks. A body hurtles back and slams hard into the window behind it, crashing through the thin pane of glass.

Ryan’s hand curls around Ray’s wrist and starts to pull him down the street. “We need to move. I appreciate the fact that you’re watching so closely, Ray, but now’s really not the fucking time to stand there gawking.”

“I wasn’t gawking,” Ray lies.

“You fucking liar,” Ryan breathes just loud enough for him to hear, and then he blows a hole through a cop’s chest on the corner, bulletproof vest not doing shit against a slug from a shotgun. Ray can see the wet and bloody cavern in the man’s ribcage before he topples, blood bubbling up as he struggles and fails to breathe. Ryan pulls him further along and around the corner, shoving him down an alley. Ray stumbles and staggers, his grip almost loosening on the pistol in his hand. He can’t drop it. He wants to. He can’t.

He’s spent almost a month on rooftops, with quick and clean getaways where he throws up a hood and disappears into the crowds on San Francisco streets. He had nearly forgotten what he and Ryan were like together. No such thing as a clean getaway - though sometimes quick ones, depending on their tactics. No such thing as killing just a target and getting out. He staggers. His hand scrapes along the wall hard to keep him upright, his palm aching. He must’ve taken off the first layer of skin trying to stay standing.

“Ray,” Ryan says cautiously, taking a few steps closer. He must’ve heard something - the scrape of Ray’s palm on the brickwork or his ragged breathing. He’s looking at Ray in the same way someone looks at a cornered animal, cautiously reaching forward to touch it and see if it snaps.

“Fuck you,” Ray tells him, and bursts into laughter so dark and fucking genuine that it feels like a physical blow.

He wants to stop laughing. He can’t bring himself far enough down from the sickening push of adrenaline in his gut to push the motion through, instead letting the sound catch in his throat over and over again. Instead, Ray staggers a few feet further away, stopping to press his hand against the oddly damp wall again. Graffiti pops bright against the walls, colors and lines offering some order. He wants to scream. He wants to slide down against the wall and just stop thinking for a long time. Ryan’s hand slips around his waist, holding him upright on instinct.

Ryan isn’t smiling. They move a step or two like this, Ray almost limp.

He says Ray’s name again, reaching with gloved hands to take Ray’s jaw in both of his hands. It forces him to still. “We can’t just sit here,” Ryan says.

“I know,” Ray agrees, shoulders still shaking with barely restrained laughter. “I fucking know.” He glances up and around, trying to identify where they’re at. It takes him a moment. He’s never been down this alley, but he knows the streets on either side of them. And as much as he just wants to sit here in the grime and wetness for a while, he really can’t. So instead, he has to force himself up. He’s leaning right up against an abandoned building, he’s sure of it. He steps back and stares at the door next to him.

He gulps down air and considers it.

“Is this abandoned?” Ryan starts to ask, something skeptical in his voice, and Ray surges forward and kicks open the door. It slams open and bounces off the opposite wall. Usually this kind of thing is Ryan’s job, but if Ray doesn’t start taking some control of the situation here, he feels like he’s never going to get it back. He can hear Ryan’s raised eyebrow in his voice. “Okay. Guess so.”

“It better fucking be,” Ray says, and grabs Ryan by his jacket in order to pull him inside. The door doesn’t quite close properly thanks to the way he kicked it in, but it at least looks mostly closed. He leans up against it for a moment, shutting his eyes. Ryan’s footsteps move into the room ahead of them. They stay slow and steady, so evidently it is empty after all. Something scrapes along the floor, and Ray opens his eyes to see Ryan approaching with a chair. The two of them wedge the chair underneath the door handle together, giving them a few moments to breathe.

Then they stand there in silence, staring at the rest of an abandoned room. The walls are cracked and old, graffiti making it inside as proof of how long this place has sat derelict.

“What now?” Ray finally asks.

Ryan shrugs. He heads back into the room and Ray follows slowly, the two of them standing a few feet apart. Ryan. “We talk. Did you miss it? Any of it? Or are you really that detached?”

He almost lies. Then he watches as Ryan tugs off the mask. There’s bags underneath his eyes, dark shadows there that don’t come from messily applied greasepaint. For a moment Ray almost wants to ask him when he last slept, but the answer would probably just inspire more guilt.

He can’t lie right now. He can’t fucking do it. “I missed it, Ryan. I’m not going to lie about that, but the fact you’re even asking shows you’re just missing the point. The problem _is_ that I missed it, that I want to do that kind of thing to people. You shot two guys in the head and probably crippled a few of them. Why are you okay with that? Why am I the only one in the crew who thinks about this kind of shit any more?”

Ryan stares at him for a long moment. His lip curls with something like contempt. “Then if it’s that important to you, you should’ve stuck around. Actually tried to make things better, or at least your version of better. You don’t want the responsibility. Like fucking always.”

The words are sharper than any of Ryan’s best knives.

Ray has been casting himself as the hero here in order to not break down. He’s the one who’s going to change things. He’s the one who’s going to get out for their sake, and also his own.

He’s the one who has always been a fucking coward.

There is a reason he chooses to sit on top of buildings and shoot people before they even know he’s there. There is a reason he chooses range, and distance, and detachment. And Ryan, for all of his many faults, is nothing if not direct. He’s fucking weird, vaguely creepy, and fixated on knives and guns, but there’s very little hiding or shrouding the fixation. You know what you’re buying into with him. You know what he thinks is right. Ray’s never been good at that kind of thing.

Ryan’s hand settles on his shoulder. His touch is gentle. “Ray,” he says steadily, “you know I care about you. I’d die for you. Almost have, more than once. But if you think I’m not going to tell you when you’re being a stupid bastard, you’re wrong.”

“I know you always will,” Ray croaks out. “But I think we’re both wrong, and both hypocrites, and both kind of right.”

“So - what? Still at an impasse?”

“I guess so.”

“Well,” Ryan murmurs, his hand pressing against Ray’s jaw, “that’s really no fucking good, is it.” He’s got that look on his face again - the one that means he’s either thinking of kissing Ray or killing him, and there’s no in between. Ray refuses to move. He presses his heels hard into the concrete and tries to not think about how this is going to end. Ryan’s thumb strokes gently along Ray’s jaw, contemplative. “You staying somewhere?”

“Yeah. Why.” Ray’s tone is flat, refusing to let the second word rise into a proper question. He doesn’t like the thought of showing Ryan where he’s been living, this sad motel room with all of his belongings still mostly packed into the bag he brought with him. He wasn’t planning to stay here for as long as he did.

He’s almost embarrassed for Ryan to see what he turns into when alone.

“Need somewhere to lay low,” Ryan says quietly. “We can get back to the Zentorno. You give me directions. Evidently wherever it is has served you well enough, so I’d assume it’ll still do so.”

For a few moments, Ray searches for a sound argument.

There really isn’t one. He grimaces and nods slowly. Ryan smiles and tugs the mask back on again, like he hasn’t cornered Ray into giving something newly important up.

——

They stop on the way to the motel, Ryan’s Zentorno pulling smoothly into the diner parking lot. Ray’s bike is still there, surprisingly, which is one good thing to come out of this day.  He digs the keys out of his pocket and pulls back out onto the street ahead of Ryan. For a moment, he considers what it would take to dodge back into the city and try to lose him in the maze of streets and alleys just wide enough for a motorcycle to fit through.

It’s too risky. Ryan could just lean out of the driver’s window with that perfect aim at a middling range, and kill him with a few shots.

Or maybe he just wants it to be too risky.

Ray slowly pulls back out onto the street. Sure enough, the Zentorno’s right on his ass, not giving him a lot of room to pull a maneuver without risking toppling the bike and breaking something on the way down. Ryan _cares about him_ , whatever the fuck that means, but seems to have learned not to trust him quite as much.

Smart after all.

Ray spits out a curse into the helmet’s visor, letting the small contained world it creates make him feel secure, just for a few minutes. He almost wishes he had picked a diner further away from the motel room, just so he’d have more time with just him and the road, where he can let the Zentorno’s engine behind him fade into nothing but a kind of auditory static.

Instead, it’s a constant reminder that the change he was wishing for has arrived. Just not the change he wanted, and not how he wanted it.

——

When Ryan gets out of the car outside the motel, he must’ve stored his mask in the glovebox. He looks around at the building for a moment as Ray tugs off his helmet and gloves. The two of them stay mostly quiet. Ray checks for the room key in his pocket again and nods, briefly pleased with how things have gone. Then Ryan moves back into his peripheral vision, and any small pleasure from the day promptly evaporates.

“C’mon,” Ray mutters. Ryan reaches over and pries his helmet from his fingers, the consummate gentleman. He leads Ryan up the stairs to his room, unlocking the door and glancing around the landing. No one here seems aware of the chaos that occurred just a small distance away - like all of the violence and death was just compartmentalized.

You have to live anyway. That’s how it goes, right?

Once Ryan gets inside, Ray shuts the door behind him. He locks it and checks the lock twice, just to be sure. It’s the little pieces of his routine that he’s trying to pull together, even as it all unravels thanks to Ryan’s presence. Ryan takes a seat on the edge of the bed and goes about unlacing his boots like he’s been here for the full month that Ray has. Ray kind of hates it. He hates how good Ryan is at sliding from one situation to another like he’s been there all along. He has to put so much effort into it - into making sure that this other self of his is perfectly constructed, whereas Ryan just _is_ no matter where he is or who he’s with.

At most, he adjusts small parts of himself, like a series of dials he can recalibrate to fit the moment.

Ryan finishes unlacing his boots, and Ray’s still lurking like a fucking dumbass right next to the door. “It’s your hotel room,” he says without looking up as he places his boots by the bedside table. “You paid for it. So stop acting like you’re about to fucking bolt out the door again.” He unzips his jacket and gets up to hang it on the back of one of the chairs next to Ray.

In the end, Ray’s solution to his own paralysis is to march firmly into the bathroom, shut the door, put the toilet seat down, and sit there on the toilet for a good two minutes while he tries to calm down. Anxious is the wrong word. He doesn’t think Ryan’s going to do anything, but he’s been functioning for so long under the notion of some kind of plan ( _figure out where you’re going to go, and then go there_ ) that this utter disruption is almost a catastrophe.

The television turns on out in the other room. It’s the local newscaster, talking about some political scandal. Like nothing’s happened at all.

Ray staggers up. He turns on the spot wildly, fingers curling into a fist.

He made it through this whole fucking day without really breaking. There were a lot of close calls - almost crying on that cliffside, laughing to keep from just digging his thumbs into his own eyes until he didn’t have to _see_ in that alleyway, the strange distance as Ryan shot person after person in the midday light - but he made it through. Except the day isn’t over. Except this space isn’t his alone.

He laughs again, a low huff, and the sound climbs into something like a snarl or a scream. His right hand curls into a fist, and he’s not thinking for one blessed moment when he swings hard at the mirror. It’s stupid, but it’s some kind of revenge for the sheer fucking audacity of showing him his own expression, lost and angry and just so fucking _stupid_ —

The glass cracks apart, and Ray staggers back. The back of his legs hit the toilet and he grabs onto the doorframe to steady himself, his hand aching. When he glances down, there’s red staining his knuckles, a few thin cuts welling up with blood.

Again: you have to live anyway. Like people say.

His hand is still dripping blood when he opens the bathroom door and walks calmly out into the room. Ryan, by this point, is leaning back on the bed, hands neatly folded on his lap as he watches the weekly weather report. Ray goes over to open the blinds just a little, enough to let some natural light in, and finally settles at the table by the window. Ryan’s jacket hangs on the back of his chair, and Ray sets his injured hand down flat on the tabletop. It hurts to extend his fingers, but he goes through with it anyway, wincing just slightly.

The television turns off with a soft click.

The only illumination in the room is the soft light thrown in stripes across Ray’s skin. He stares down at it, at the way it cuts perpendicular along the wounds on his fingers. The bed creaks as Ryan sits up and moves to the edge of the bed, looking down at his knees for a moment.

Finally, the two of them look at each other nearly simultaneously. “You done?” Ryan asks.

“I guess so.” He isn’t in the long term. Not even close. But for right now, yeah, he’s fucking done.

Ryan stands up and crosses the space between them, his steps nearly silent on the carpet. Ray almost flinches back when Ryan gets down on his knees and gently takes his injured hand in both of his. He brushes his thumb gently along the back of his hand, smearing some of the blood a little further. “What did you do in there?”

Ray closes his eyes. “Punched the mirror.” Ryan chuckles a little to himself and gets up. Ray keeps his eyes shut and breathes slowly, his hand limp on his knee. He hears the sink running in the bathroom and can feel Ryan’s presence close again. Something scrapes along the carpet, and when he opens his eyes again, Ryan’s pulled the other chair closer. He’s got some paper towels, some damp and some not, and sets about gently cleaning off Ray’s hand. It stings, but in a distant kind of way. Ryan’s touch is utterly gentle and careful, tilting his hand towards the dim light in order to make sure it’s been cleaned properly.

“Didn’t look like you broke off too much glass,” Ryan mutters, “so I think as long as you keep it clean, you’ll be okay. Got any gauze?”

“In the bag.” Ray gestures towards it with his free hand. “On the side pocket. Knew I’d need some at some point.” He flexes his hand again, watching as the blood wells up. It’s a bad idea, but there’s something cathartic about hurting after causing all that hurt. The bag unzips in the corner, and Ray watches as Ryan approaches again with a roll of gauze.

He tuts softly and picks up another paper towel. “Still bleeding, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ray lies.

“Must’ve hit that mirror pretty hard. Here. Keep some pressure on it while I find the end of this gauze.” They sit there in silence as Ryan picks at the roll until he manages to get a corner going. Ray keeps wiping blood away, making sure to not move his hand again. It’s an awkward arrangement to wrap his hand up, but they manage it. The gauze is perfectly tight - enough to keep pressure on the cuts, but not enough to cut off blood flow or anything by accident.

Once all the wrapping is done, Ryan leans back. “There.” The word seems to be more to fill the space than anything that matters.

Ray closes his eyes again. He turns his head towards the light and only opens them for that moment, looking out at the world on the other side of the blinds. He’s glad he didn’t open them all the way. It’s just stripes and pieces of whatever exists on the other side of the glass, parts of something but never the whole. After a moment, he reaches up and tugs off his glasses, setting them down on the table. Then he rubs his eyes and leans forward, elbows on his knees, and lets his head rest against his clasped hands.

He hears Ryan doing something - fabric rubbing against fabric. Out of the corner of his eye, if he turns his head just a little, he can see Ryan putting his gloves down on the table. Hadn’t even taken them off yet. Maybe he was just sitting on the bed listening to Ray in the bathroom, making sure he wasn’t doing anything too stupid.

“Come to bed,” Ryan says quietly. His hand presses against Ray’s shoulder, constant and even pressure.

Ray squeezes his hands tighter together, like he’s praying. He’s not. He doesn’t even know how to pray, but he kind of wishes he did for this moment alone. He doesn’t know what to do. The right option is obvious, but the wrong option is so fucking tempting. And Ray is nothing if not good at giving into temptation. He sags forward a few more degrees before nodding. When he stands, Ryan’s right there to steady him.

He glances at the clock. It’s barely three o’clock in the afternoon, and he feels like he’s been awake for a full seventy-two hours.

The two of them make it over to the bed together. They both stand next to it, Ray unsure what’s going to happen next. Then Ryan leans close, his thumb pressing against Ray’s jaw again, and he catches him in a kiss. It’s hungry, almost starving, like their first kiss months ago. That time it had been up against a building, Ryan pressing his body against Ray’s like he wanted to trap him there. This time, it’s that same hunger but with something pulled back inside it, a little bit of apprehension coming through. Like he’s trying not to scare Ray off.

Fuck it.

Ray is just as greedy as every single other member of the crew. If he’s going to succumb, even temporarily, he might as well go all in. He might as well put all the cards on the table, like this. He brings his bandaged hand up and presses against the back of Ryan’s neck, pulling him closer. Ryan lets out a low curse against his mouth, lips tasting of spearmint and something sweet and nearly chemical - probably diet Coke, if past experience tells him anything.

The two of them fall gracelessly back onto the bed, some old springs squeaking underneath the stress. “You’re paying this shitty motel for this fucking bed if it snaps in half,” Ray snarls, tugging Ryan’s shirt up even as he delivers that sour little warning.

“Whatever you say,” Ryan mumbles, eyes raking up and down Ray’s body. This isn’t going to fix anything. In fact, it’s probably going to make things worse. The two of them are nothing, though, if not professionals at making things exponentially worse for themselves and others. It’s almost a comforting thought. They are making things shittier again, and at least that’s a familiar state between them.

Ryan’s fingers slip against Ray’s waistband, unbuttoning his jeans.

There’s some small atrophied part of him that sounds like it’s halfway to fucking Stockholm syndrome that thinks this might somehow fix things. Give Ryan what he wants, appease the monster, so to speak, and this might work out in the end. It won’t. He knows that.

Maybe, in truth, he just wants to forget.

It’s easy to do that with Ryan, where the lines of who he is and who the man on top of him is can blur so easily.

——

When he wakes up briefly, it’s to the sound of the shower running. Ray rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling for a moment. He looks up for a moment, propping himself up on his elbows, and stares at Ryan’s jacket hanging on the chair. It feels normal to be here with Ryan, nights spent in safehouses barely any nicer than this cheap room. It’s dark outside. The clock informs him that it’s just past seven at night.

He rolls towards the window, away from the bathroom, and stares out the window.

A while later, the bathroom door opens softly. He listens to Ryan walk across the carpet, and he slows and steadies his breathing. He even shuts his eyes and listens. The covers move back. The weight on the bed evens out again, and he feels Ryan slip an arm around his waist. For a moment, he expects Ryan to call him out for merely pretending to be asleep. Surely it’s obvious. Instead, Ryan sighs softly and presses a kiss against the back of his neck.

Ryan’s voice is a low rumble, so soft that it takes some focus to hear it with the hum of the air conditioner in the background. “I never told you this before, but I’m pretty sure I love you, Ray. I thought you knew, but - I guess you wouldn’t have left if you had known. So maybe I’m the idiot here.”

Ray freezes. It takes every ounce of willpower to not tense up, a reaction that would be obvious considering how Ryan’s body is pressed against his. He almost wants to say something, but any words he might say wouldn’t be enough. He doesn’t even know what to say.

Ryan presses another kiss against the back of his neck, this one so gentle that it’s barely there. “Just come back with me. Okay?”

Silence sits heavily between them.

There’s a noise behind him. Ray squeezes his eyes tighter shut. He realizes - Ryan’s _laughing_ , the sound so soft and miserable that it nearly makes him turn over and see what’s happening. “Well,” he breathes finally, the sound so soft and shattered, “I guess I’m just as much of a coward as you are. I can tell you everything like this, but can’t say a fucking thing while looking you in the eye. Fitting, huh?”

Ray starts counting to slow his breaths again.

“I just thought you knew,” Ryan repeats. Then he goes silent. His arm moves back, and Ray can feel the weight on the bed readjusting again.

He stares at the wall for a long while, eyes tracing the fine details.

He knows what he’s going to do, even now.

——

When he gets up, the room’s empty. For a moment, he merely listens. No sound from the bathroom. No sound from anywhere. Ray slowly climbs out of bed, his steps silent on the carpet, and walks over to the window. He can just see through the blinds, and at this angle, he can see Ryan’s Zentorno. Ryan is leaning against it, serene and still. He’s already dressed and ready to go.

Oh. He expected Ray to bolt immediately.

Kind of smart, considering that’s exactly what Ray was going to do. But now he’s going to take his sweet fucking time getting ready. He takes his time showering, making sure it’s cold enough where it almost hurts. He takes his time packing everything up slowly, and he spends a good ten minutes just sitting on the bed, fully dressed, and thinking about what to do next.

He opens the door slowly. The sun is almost too bright to bear.

Descending the stairs feels like it takes hours, or maybe seconds. Either way, it’s not enough time.

“I already paid for the nights you spent here. And the mirror, too,” Ryan says quietly. He’s leaning on the Zentorno still, as if he hasn’t moved since Ray peered out the window nearly an hour and a half ago. “Don’t worry about the bike. We can strip the plates and leave it here. Let them tow it. It’s not like it’s an expensive piece of hardware.”

“Thanks for paying,” Ray says, flippant as ever, and tugs the duffel bag over his shoulder. He starts to walk towards the bike, steps perfectly steady.

He hears the sound - metal dragging against nylon, and he draws at the same moment, dropping his helmet to the ground in an instant.

It’s been a full day since the diner, and maybe they hadn’t really moved out of that parking lot to begin with. Ryan’s aiming that same first pistol at him. Ray’s got a new gun, but there’s nothing else different. The sun shines down the same way. Past Ryan, he can see the blinds being pulled down in the office. When Ryan says that he _paid_ , he must mean he paid someone for the nights Ray spent here and, more importantly, to not pay attention to what happens here on the asphalt as it becomes to warm.

He’s prepared.

“Seriously, Ryan?” Ray swallows. “After all that, you’re willing to shoot me.”

Ryan smiles, grim. “I’ll try to hit somewhere non-fatal.”

“Thanks,” Ray says again, perfectly numb. He inhales, locking his knees so he can’t move, and he takes the plunge. “Ry. I love you too. You know that, right?”

That grim quality in Ryan’s expression twists to something hollow. His aim doesn’t waver, but Ray wasn’t expecting that much of a change. “You were awake last night,” he says slowly, putting two and two together. His grip tightens just slightly on the pistol, something Ray only sees because he’s focusing on it, expecting to see the barrel light up any second now.

“Yeah.” Ray brings his other hand up to keep a hold on his pistol. “I heard you.”

“And you’re still going to leave.”

Ray drops his left hand from his pistol again mere moments after trying to steady his aim. Fucking useless motion, but it felt good. He runs his fingers through his hair, tugging hard. “Fucking Christ, Ryan. You know why I’m going to leave. Love can’t fix whatever’s broken here. It might help temporarily. But eventually, I’d get scared or the crew would keep going in the direction it’s obviously been going, and we’d end up here again. Might as well cut the ties now, right?” Ryan, out of the two of them, should get what Ray’s saying. He plays in absolutes, in sheer inevitability. Ray is trying to get a foothold in that territory for once.

“I could shoot you.”

“Yeah.” Ray shrugs. “But you’re not going to shoot me, and I don’t want to shoot you either.”

Ryan’s eyes move between Ray and the bike and the street. “I could conceivably follow you.”

“Also true.” Ray takes one step back, carefully measured. Ryan doesn’t squeeze the trigger. “But I think you won’t - at least, not very far. I’m willing to bet on that.”

“And you’d go through with that bet,” Ryan agrees. “Nothing like Gavin.”

“I’d fucking hope not,” Ray says with a small laugh.

Ryan’s expression folds slightly. Ray’s never seen him _give in_ before, not visually. But here it is, in all of its strange glory. “Fine. I’ll ask the obvious question here. You think you’re ever going to pass through Los Santos again?”

“Maybe.” It’s the best answer he can give. He doesn’t know what’ll happen three, four, ten years down the line.

“You know how to find me. If you pass through again - you can always stay with me as long as you need it.”

“I know,” Ray says softly.

The two of them simply look at each other. For a moment, Ray almost drops the gun and steps forward. It’s still tempting. It’s still right there. Instead, he reaches down slowly and picks up the helmet. He holsters the gun on the way back up, gripping the helmet with both of his hands. It’s not like it’ll stop Ryan from shooting him in the stomach if he really feels like it, but it feels good to fold his hands around something and for it to hold.

Ray turns his back on Ryan again.

He closes his eyes and starts to walk forward on unsteady feet. He’s almost prepared for the feel of the bullet ripping through his spine, killing him or paralyzing him. If he’s lucky, it fucks up his nervous system enough where he can’t feel anything, or he dies after a single moment of raw and insurmountable pain. If he’s unlucky, he doesn’t die and feels every second of it. He takes one step. Then a few more, unsteady and nearly staggering. Nothing happens. There’s no low pop from a weapon discharging. Nothing happens at all.

He straps the helmet on, listening to the sound of his own quick breathing as it echoes.

His hands settle on the handlebars of the motorcycle. Ray clumsily searches his pockets for the key, inserting it into the ignition. He starts to turn the bike, backing it up to face towards the street. If he gets on the highway here, he can start driving east. Not like he can go any further west without dropping into the ocean. He doesn’t know when he’ll stop.

Ray sees Ryan standing perfectly still, gun lowered by his side. His expression is utterly blank. “You don’t have to do this,” Ryan says one last time, his voice faint and muffled below the roar of the engine. The bike stops. Ray

“Yeah, Ryan,” Ray breathes, his voice almost lost even to him, “I do.”

Ray’s body presses closer to the low line of the motorcycle. His fingers curl around the clutch, not quite pulling on it. For a moment, he almost expects Ryan to step in front of him. He, of everyone in the crew, would take that risk with that kind of confidence, wagering broken ribs or even death on Ray’s reaction time.

Ray isn’t a good person. Neither is Ryan. None of the crew are truly good people. Maybe it was wrong of him to try and force that on them, to push an unnatural state onto the people he still loves so dearly that he’s willing to rip them apart to try and save them. But it’ll be better to do something. He has to cut himself off too. All today did was remind him of the kind of person he turns into around Ryan Haywood, electric and burning and so dangerous that the thrill of it enters his veins like a perfect high.

He pulls the visor down, locking it into place with a click.

Ryan’s lips move around the familiar syllables of Ray’s name, and Ray’s fingers squeeze tight around the clutch, the bike roaring to life as it kicks up dirt and gravel and turns towards the highway.

——

Ryan calls Geoff once the bike is so distant on the horizon that it disappears. It gives him enough time to consider, to know exactly what his tone must be.

“Yeah, Ryan?” Geoff says shortly upon answering. His voice is distant enough where it means Ryan must be on speakerphone. “What’d you find up in San Francisco?” He still sounds fucking pissed, but that’s typical Geoff. He’ll hold a grudge until the day he dies, and possibly resurrect himself just out of spite.

“Nothing,” Ryan replies, just as clipped. “I’ll drive back down to Los Santos today. Should be at the penthouse sometime tonight. Might be late.” He’ll have to stop at a convenience store. Meg taught him that trick for hickeys years ago - ice and Chapstick. That and a diet Coke, plus twenty minutes outside of the gas station with the radio going. He doesn’t want to get back to the penthouse looking like anything happened last night except him scouring the streets of San Francisco for a ghost.

Just a ghost. That’s all he found. Maybe it’s not even a lie.

Static crackles through the line quietly for a few moments. “I would say ‘I told you so’,” Geoff says cautiously, “but somehow I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

The corner of Ryan’s mouth lifts in a smile. “Probably not. Might walk in shooting then.”

Maybe he’ll tell Jack about what happened. Maybe he won’t.

Geoff’s voice rises up again. “I’m still pissed, just so you know. You’re going to be given all the shittest contracts I can find for at least a month. I don’t give a fuck. You will be throwing corpses into fucking ditches for all I care. Cleanup in the shitty parts of town for four weeks straight.”

“I know.” Ryan closes his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect any less, Geoff.”

He places his hand on the hood of the Zentorno.

It takes Geoff a full minute to say anything else. “I’m sorry,” he finally says. “I know you wanted him to be there. Everyone did, deep down. Even me, as much as I doubted you. But sometimes - sometimes shit doesn’t work out. Sometimes people just die. Death’s pretty much a fucking constant, dude, and that sucks.”

Sometimes they just die. Sometimes they just _leave_ —

“Yeah. It does.” Ryan moves the phone away from his ear so he can inhale hard, forcing something broken out of his tone. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Okay. Drive safe.”

“Got it.”

He hangs up and slides the phone back into his pocket.

For a long moment, Ryan stays there, watching the horizon. It’s humid out here, close to the ocean. He watches the traffic go by - watches the road. There are a dozen things that could happen to Ray on that road - some wayward sedan sideswiping him, a tire blowing out while he’s going too fast and the bike spinning out into the median. He could be bleeding out right now, and none of them would know it.

Sometimes people just die, and you have to live anyway.

He reaches for the handle on the car door.

There’s nothing else for him here except for the strands and pieces of _something_ , a thing that almost existed but evaporated now, or almost a month ago, or years ago, at the beginning of all of this.

Nothing but certain kind of graves here.

It’s time to go.

**Author's Note:**

> Work and chapter titles from "Moon Over Goldsboro" by the Mountain Goats (I will never stop).


End file.
